HORTICULTURAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2842, 2 September 1908, Page 10

HORTICULTURAL NOTES.

By. J. Gmbib.

STOCKS.

Stocks are among the: sweetest and gayest of garden plants and universal tavouTites. The summer-flowering or 10week stock may be had in many colours some of the German and other seedsmen offering collections containing 36 shades of colour. These are best sown during September, October, and November. For summer and autumn blooming they may be sown in boxes, in a frame, or on prepared sheltered beds. When the plants appear give plenty of air, and keep them near the glass to prevent drawing. .As soon as the seedlings can be handled they are best pricked off into other boxee or beds, and ju3t given sufficient water .o keep them' from flagging. When they have formed six good leaves plant them out in rich coil and treat them liberaily to water during dry weather until they bloom. There are several sections or 10-week stoclns. all of which are worthy of cultivation. The large flowering 10-week in good soil attains a height of 2jft.' The > spikes of bloom are very long, and the individual flowers large ia size and very double. The large flowering pyamidal 10-week stock differs from the above in habit of growth, being more pyramidal and not so buahy. Spikes and floweirs ore large. The Giant Perfection 10week stock is my favourite. The growth is strong, and the spikes and individual flowers ore large and very double. Biennial stocks include those that flower the season after sowing. For spring blooming thoy should- be 6own duriue January and February in the open border, and when large enough plant out in sheltered places where they are to bloom. The East Lothian intermediate stock is the be««t-known of fch? biennial section, and ai'-e nearly always in bloom. These can ba had in four coloure, and are unrivalled for beds and borders. The Brompton etock ie a tallerffrowing stock than the East Lothian, and is a popular sort. All these sorts named givo a large pei-centa.ge of double flowers. The only method of propagation is by seeds, and when onoe possession ie obtained

of a good strain of stock ivhieh produces but few single-£o-ivered cnc3 out of a great number, there is not much difficulty in keeping it, for the stock has a strong disposition to go double, and wh«n a few 1 single ones only escape -this tendency they may be expected to yield seed equally disposed to yield double flowers. On the other hand, if we remove a single etock from" among hundroJe of others equally single, and of a batch which has no disposition to go double, that single one would not yield in ite progeny one more double variety for being planted among a thousand double ones, bo that the common advice to save seed from such single-flowered plants

as grow near many double ones is good I for nothing unless the single ones come I from the fame strain as the doubles. In

other words, the planting of a thousand double stocks around a single one does not change the nature of its seeds, but the tendency to doubleness is an* inherent. property brought about in certain plants by careful culture and seed-saving, as all other floral improvements Tiave. been. The fine strains of stocks offered by our leading seedsmen have been saved from pot-grown, plants, and in Germany, where the saving of stock seed is a specialty with many, some individual growers have as many as 40,000 pots in use for stocks alone.