GARDENING.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVI, 2 December 1857, Page 3

GARDENING.

BY A PRACTICAL OARDBNEB.

After all, gardening is splendid amusemeut. Here we see a man wandering through his pinks and pansies, to see what novelty he can recognise among them, marking and describing such as he hopes or believes are better than old ones, and sowing again for next year with increased zest. There we observe an amateur of somewhat better circumstances anxiously looking over bis batch of seedling geraniums, valuing each little departure from the parent as so much acquired property. One step higher, and the noblemau is watching the growth of imported novelties which his collector abroad has consigned to him. While the most humble of the workiug-classes, who can only afford to grow stocks and asters, is as proud of their superiority as the huntsman is of his dog and horses.

We incline to think that those who most enjoy gardening are growers of perennials from seed. The excitement of such as raise seedlings must be far greater than those who merely grow what they can buy. Just now there are verbenas, petunias, geraniums, calceolarias, pansies, pinks, carnations, picotees, dahlias, columbines, sweetwilliaros, digitales, all very popular, many in bloom, others coming, and the growers, having saved their seed well, intensely anxious to see the result of their labour in the opening blossoms, well knowing that they will all be different, and hoping that among them some will be better than the plants or varieties from which they were raised ; and under any circumstances the growers are ready to sow others to afford them the same pleasure the next year.

Everything that is grown in collection is proper to sow, because if we do raise a novelty we have the pleasure of naming it, and the improved variety is easily propagated to any extent, and soon placed in everybody's hands. What would many give to be the raisers of a plant that will bear the name they give it iv all parts of the world, in thousands of collections ; and if a thing be good, it will reach every garden, and never get worse for spreading abroad. Now, then, is the time to sow these perennials. Every florist's flower (the tulip excepted) may be sown now, and, indeed, it we take nature for our guide, the period when the seed falls must be the proper time to sow it ; but this will only apply to really hardy subjects, and we know with regard to'tulips that a piece occupied by some that went to seed, and had not been disturbed by any crop after the tulips came up, was covered with seedlings the next spring. We naturally save seed from the flowers we possess without distinction ; but as, in a general collection, we have some very much better than others, we ought, if we want good novelties, to select half-a-dozen of the very best alone to save seed for our own sowing. Suppose, for iustance, we want geraniums ; take Lady Paxton for the sake of her beautiful ruby spots, emperor for the rick black and crimson, purple standard for its colour, Eveljn or delicatum for its pure white, nonsuch for its brown blotches and fine habit, and Alexander for its novelty. Let these be placed away from all others, and you will have a chance of good seed ; what applies to geraniums applies to anything else. Select the best and most remarkable half-dozen, and save your own seed. For the present sowing, you must trust to the best market you can find, because you save a season. You will have no difficulty with polyanthus, pansy, columbine, auricula, Chinese primula, verbena, petunia, chrysanthemum, double daisy, calceolaria, nor indeed any other ; but, after all, there is nothing like your own.

Plants in Dwelling-Houses want incessant care. Water as soon as they are dry, and turn the drainings out of the pan, shifting into larger pots those that have filled the present ones with roots. The best to add to your collections now are the scarlet geraniums, if you have none, because they bloom continuously ; give them the benefit of a shower of rain if you can, and if you have no place to set them out of doors, water their leaves now and then to wash off the dust*

Weeds! Weeds! Weeds! — Keep these under by hoeing ia dry weather, and pulling them out by hand in wet; for never was a truer saying than, "111 weeds grow apace;" there is nothing grows faster, unless it be the unwelcome shoots of a briar that has been marked with a good rose, and unless these are examined every two days you will find the briar shoots six inches long. Go on in other respects as before, only don't forget the watering of potted plants. — Weekly Times.

It has now been ascertained that the silkcrop in France is more productive than, last year's j but it is still very deficient.

The extraordinary level which the price of wheat maintains in Madrid, in face of a magnificent harvest, partly gathered in, has led to a serious suspicion that the members of the Government are enriching themselves by sharing with capitalists in creating monopoly prices. Wheat in Madrid is sold at the rate of from 102s. to 106s. the English quarter. In the budget for 1857, no less than £600,000 sterling is put down for subsidising bakers that bread may be cheapened to the poor. Nearly all over Spain the harvest is " thoroughly firstrate." There is a remarkably fine crop of chick-pea, largely used in the dinner of nearly every Spaniard. It is estimated that an abundant corn bavest in Spain will feed the country for three years.

An English lady, possessed of the natural bloom so often found in the humid climate of Britain, and so rarely in the drier continental atmosphere, felt very indignant at the Parisian belles attempting to vie with her by the employment of rouge. She had a little King Charles Spaniel, and she taught him to lick the cheek of any one who took him on her lap. So at balls she picked out the mm t ost highly-rouged ladies, got introduced, shovjed her pretty dog, who of course was duly admired and petted ; and invariably the result was that tile ladies had to hurry from the roora with one or both cheeks paler thau when they entered it. But though it was fun to the English lady, it wa3 death to her little dog. The cosmetic is not wholesome, and the unconscious avenger of his mistress's real charms fell a victim to the poisonous nature of the fictitious charms of her rivals, «