The Garden.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 485, 5 July 1890, Page 3

The Garden.

[By Hobtus.] Sticking Boses in Water. A wbiter for “Vick’s Magazine” says: “Recently I wasconversing with a policeman who is a rose enthusiast, and he told me he had strong bushea of some of the best hybrid perpetuals upon their own roots that he had rooted himself in a way quite new to me. Having obtained a suitable shoot or several of them, they were placed in an ordinary bottle which contained some water, and this bottle was hung upon the wall of the house in a sunny position and there left., water being supplied to make up the deficiency caused by evaporation. In this water, which often becomes very. warm from the heat of tho sun, the cutting remained, and after a short period they calloused, when they were taken out and dibbled into pots in the ordinary way, the formation of the roots soon taking place. “ The above plan was claimed as expeditious, as the cuttings calloused much sooner in water than they did in the soil. It js known that many things [root readily in water, and oleanders are frequently propagated in that way, whilst some sedum specfcabile that I have lately had in a cut state had rooted freely long before the flowers faded. With the roses, if the cutting is once nicely calloused, success is almost a certainty, and if this needed state can be brought about by immersion of the base m water, we then have a simple and valuable aid to rose propagation, because it is much easier to preserve alive a cutting placed.in water than it is one in the soil during its early stage.” improving Sandy Soil. Soil of a somewhat sandy character, says “Popular Gardening,” although excellent for garden purposes on account of warmth, ease of manipulation and quickness of responding to fertiliser applications, has the one great fault of allowing moisture, and plant food with it, to escape to the lower strata by leeching much faster than is often desirable. ■ This fault is most apparent when the soil does not contain much decaying vegetable matter (carbon), and hence may be remedied by abundant applications of barnyard manure. This course is naturally an expensive one, and a good dressing of clay can often be made still more effective in correcting the mechanical deficiencies of sandy soils, and at the same time to ndd the element potash, which is often deficient in such soils. It can be put on the land during the fall or winter, at any time when most convenient, and the frost will act on it and pulverise it. A correspondent of the “ Gardener s Chronicle ” stated that he is able to tell to a yard, by the looks of the crops, where the clay was put, and one that has had several dressings always carries better strawberries and culinary vegetables than either of the others, which have not had any, Tho land on the first-named quarter is more holding of moisture, the clay taking moisture from dew and rain, and which it retains better, and absorbs more of the juices of the manures used than the undressed land.

For mixing with light loam for potting strawberries, clay is of great.value, and so it i 3 used in the same way with manure, or leaf-mould for growing melons, which like stiff soils, but in either case it should be such of it as has become ameliorated by exposure to the weather. Some gardeners may have too stiff and unworkable kind of clay, and long for the lighter material, but the remedy in their case lies tho other way, and road - scrapings, leaf - rakings, and rubbish-heap ingredients, properly and continuously employed, will soon effect an improvement.