Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/129

Rh very early in spring, and the blooms will show immediately. Provide some neat green stakes, slender but strong, eighteen inches in length, and tie every shoot, as soon as the bloom is visible, loosely to a stake, as, when the flowers are fully expanded, their weight when wet with a shower will sometimes cause them to fall over and break the stems. All they need after this is abundance of water. They can scarcely have too much at the root, or be too often sprinkled overhead. When the roots begin to run upon the surface, assist them with liquid manure, rather strong, once a week, and by this time the blossoms will be expanding and colouring, and, after acquiring their proper character, will continue in perfection a longer period than those of any other plant in our gardens.

These plants are not to be shifted again till the next spring; then they are to be cut back to about eight buds from the base, and shifted into 10-inch pots, and they will make enormous specimens. The next year they may be shifted to 15-inch pots, and after that it is not advisable to increase their bulk any further. A few cuttings to furnish small useful plants should be put in every year in April or May; or if there is no convenience to strike by bottom-heat, they may be rooted under bell-glasses without heat in June, but it is best to strike them not later than the first week in May to insure the formation of ripe wood for blooming the next year. For ordinary purposes the most useful are yearling plants, which, when they have bloomed once, are to be destroyed. To force them is a mere matter of temperature, and they take a moist heat from Christmas onwards as kindly as any greenhouse plants in the catalogue.

.&mdash;The Lantana is comparatively useless as a greenhouse plant, but we must not pass it by. The stove is its proper house as a pot plant, but the experienced cultivator will turn it to good account, if so minded, without the aid of a stove. In a general way the same cultivation as the verbena requires will suit them, and it is worthy of note that they flower more freely the second year than the first. In any case they like warmth and a humid atmosphere. Well-grown specimens covered with flowers are worthy of a place in any group of ornamental plants, but the odour of the flowers is so unpleasant that they are comparatively useless for making a bouquet.