Practical floriculture; a guide to the successful cultivation of florists' plants, for the amateur and professional florist . who have but a plant or two ofsome favorite variety and who wish safely to increase it,or to the florist wishino; to make the most of some valua-ble importation, this (to us) new practice is likely to proveof some benefit. The increasing taste for the new kindsof variegated Pelargoniums induced us to import a num-ber of the tricolor section, of which the now comparativelywell-known sort Mrs. Pollock is a type. These we foundto grow rather slowly, and to increase them to
Practical floriculture; a guide to the successful cultivation of florists' plants, for the amateur and professional florist . who have but a plant or two ofsome favorite variety and who wish safely to increase it,or to the florist wishino; to make the most of some valua-ble importation, this (to us) new practice is likely to proveof some benefit. The increasing taste for the new kindsof variegated Pelargoniums induced us to import a num-ber of the tricolor section, of which the now comparativelywell-known sort Mrs. Pollock is a type. These we foundto grow rather slowly, and to increase them to the bestadvantage became a matter of consideration. Layeringin the usual way, by bending them down to the ground,was, of course, in plants of that style of growth, all butimpracticable. To have taken off cuttings would have 240 PRACTICAL FLORICULTURE. not only farther enfeebled already feeble plants, but theprospect of rooting these cuttings in hot weather wasnearly hopeless; so a compromise ^vas decided on, which,for want of a better term, we call layering in the shown in figure 69, the shoot is tongued in the. Fig. 69.—MANNER OF TONGUING THE GERANITJIVI. manner of an ordinary layer. This has the eifect to arrestthe upward flow of the sap at the incision, w^hich, of course,acting to some extent as if the shoot had been taken off,induces a branching out helow the layer, providingshoots for further operations. But the effect on the vigorof the plant is much better than if the layer or shoot hadbeen detached; for, by the time it takes to get hardenedand form a callus, the shoots branching out below the cutare fit to supply the loss of foliage sustained when the SOFT-WOODED OR BEDDING PLANTS. 241 layer or cutting is detached. The cutting or layer * isin condition to be cut off in five or six days from the timeit has been tongued, and will be found not only to behealed up, and in such a condition that it will quickly emitroots, but the whole cutting presents a well-ripene
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Keywords: ., bookauthorhenderso, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookyear1882
