DELPHINIUMS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 45, 2 December 1871, Page 9

DELPHINIUMS.

From the Continent have come during the past few years some very fine and striking varieties of the perennial larkspur. Already they are somewhat numerous, but a limited selection will be found to contain the best of the double and single flowering kinds. It is very difficult to trace the origin of many of the improved forms that have been added to collections of late years, nor is it much to the purpose ; but it is surmised, not without a considerable degree of probability, that many of these are accidental garden varieties. Fifty or sixty years ago, Delphinium sinense was a favorite flower in many gardens; twenty yeai'3 later, the double form made its appearance ; and since then many highly improved varieties, both double and single, have been added. The taste for double flowers that has been so manifest of late, and which appears to take the form of regard for the grotesque and the monstrous rather than for the elegant and beautiful —has tended to make double delphiniums popular also, although they are scarcely so attractive as the single flowering kinds. But all new introductions show but little widening of the area of color, heavy and light shades of blue being the standing colors of the genus. A decided scarlet delphinium has not yet appeared ; D. cardinale, which a few years ago came in with a flourish of trumpets, has not given satisfaction. In the D. nudicaule, which Mr William Thompson, of Ipswich, introduced last year, the approach towards a scarlet flowering delphinium has certainly advanced, though some way short of what is really required. Delphiniums are very useful in combination with masses of dwarf shrubs, or for borders of a mixed character; there they come out with grand effect; and are thoroughly at home. In either instance the larger species are well fitted to stand up boldly above the shrubs or surrounding plants of dwarfer stature, which serve to conceal any " legginess" the taller species may present. In forming a mixed border of old fashioned and herbaceous plants, delphiniums should have a prominent place. The double varieties are certainly useful in securing permanence of effect; but that can be produced by the single flowers as well, if the spikes of bloom be removed as soon as they decay. This induces the throwing out of lateral shoots, and as the habit of the delphinium is invariably bushy, a succession of flowers is pretty certain. Any good garden soil suits delphiniums; but it should be tolerably moist, because the plants do not succeed well in a dry sandy soil. A certain degree of richness of soil is indispensable ; it brings out fine spikes of flower, as well as heightens their color. A plantation of the various kinds so arranged that dwarfer plants could be introduced among them, to hide any nakedness of stem otherwise apparent, would have a fine effect, if arranged according to height of growth and contrast of color. Attempts made to cultivate delphiniums in pots have not proved very successful. They have been recommended for the purpose j but unless a type of dwarf growing, bushy varieties can be produced, the result will not be very satisfactory. Somehow they appear best adapted fer out door growth, and to the garden let them be confined until some better results of pot cultivation haye been produced.

Anyone possessing a little enterprise may pleasantly at least, and perhaps profitably turn his attention to the production of seedlings of an improved type. As far as possible let him fertilise his flowers, and select for seed purposes such as display uuwonted fineness, or betray a tendency to break away from the normal character. The seed can be sown in pans as soon as ripened, or in the following spring and placed in a cold frame. The following collection contains some oi the best kinds—Double varieties : Alopecuroides, Beatsoni, Hybridum, Madame, Lelandais, Paul et Virginie, Ranunculcefiora, and Victor Lemoine, double white, and therefore indispensable in the smallest collection. Single flowering kinds : Belle Alliance, Bicolor grandifloruvn, Formosum, Gloire de St. Maude, Madame Chate, Madome Henri Jacotot, Magnificence, and Pompon Brilliant. Any nurseryman can supply the varieties given in this list.

The quality of the water used for washing the butter in preparing it for mai'kefc is stated to have an effect upon the butter ; hard spring water being the worst, soft water being the best. On this point we require more detailed information, although the facts stated in support of this opinion seem very conclusive, and certainly is a reasonable thing to suppose that the quality of water used for this purpose would have some influence more or less decided. In making the Kiel butter no working of the butter in water is allowed. The following is the method adopted for preparing the butter for market: As the butter is taken from the churn it is slightly pressed to get rid of a poition of the whey, and then put on trays and carried into the cellar, where it i 9 made ready for market. A. long trough, and which, is provided with a few holes at the bottom of the lower end, is placed in an inclined position, and is previously well washed with hot andfinally with cold water. The dairymaid, taking up some five or six pound in her hands, which are also washed in hot and finally in- cold water, keeps pressing the butter against the sides of the trough until the whey, &c., is fully expressed 5 as the butter gets extended in the process it is then rolled up and again pressed against the trough. The processes of pressing a*id rolling up are repeated again and again till the butter is freed from all whey. One churning is finished right off before another is begun.—-" Mark Lane Express." There is a vast difference in the exhaustive powers of crops ; onions, parsnips, and carrots are plain livers, and can be raised on the same ground year after year. Onions, and perhaps all garden vegetables of a nonstarchy nature and composition, require loamy soil and high manuring. Oats are immense feeders, and sap the land of its nutrition faster and more completely than rye or wheat. For the general run of garden table vegetables, rotation and rich manuring are necessary. A correspondent of the " Country Gentleman" says if coperas and saltpetre water are used around pear trees, the trees will show the effects in a large yield of fruit. He tried this on a Barlett pear tree that had yielded no fruit for two years previous ; that very year it yielded 155 large, fine pears, and the following year 250 large, fine ones, and it is still doing finely. If pear trees want iron, which most soils are deficient in sulphate of iron or copperas is a good way to supply it.