Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/183

Rh in some way or other there is glass over them. All they need for some time is to be kept regularly watered, never wet and never dry, safe from frost, but not to be stimulated by heat till it is required to push them into bloom.

As the flowering season approaches it is necessary to clean the foliage. However clean it may appear, we prefer to set a lad to work to sponge every leaf with tepid water; it is astonishing how exquisitely bright and green the leaves look after the process. As they are washed set them aside and remove a little of the top soil in the pots, not more than an inch, and supply its place with two inches of rotten manure and leaf-mould well chopped over. Remove the plants into a house where they will have a temperature of 45° by night and 55° by day. After they have been there a week, raise the temperature to 50° by night and 60° to 65° by day, and make it a rule never to flower a camellia in a higher temperature than 65°. As the flowers open remove them to a house a few degrees cooler, or lower the temperature of the house they are in about 5°, which will prolong their beauty and prevent them growing too soon, for they cannot grow and bloom properly at one and the same time.

Camellias will grow tolerably well in peat and sand if carefully looked after, but nothing is so good as turfy hazelly loam, mixed with a fifth part of leaf-mould, or thoroughly decayed hotbed manure and an equal proportion of sharp sand. When potting them, press the soil firmly round the ball, for if it is put in loosely the water will run through it, and leave the ball wherein the roots are perfectly dry, and the latter will perish accordingly. To give a general rule for the size of the new pot, we can only say that it should not exceed two sizes larger than the one the plant is taken from. When large camellias are shifted into tubs, it is a good plan to put a ring of clay on the surface of the soil in the tub to mark as nearly as possible the line of junction of the old soil and the new. The water should be poured within this circle, so as to wet the roots of the plant and keep the new soil as nearly dry as possible. When a year has elapsed remove the ring of clay and allow the water to penetrate the whole body of the soil, as by that time the roots will have pushed into the new stuff, and increased vigour of the growth above will show that the ring of clay contributed in a material degree to the success of the tubbing.