Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/193

Rh ascertain whether the lower portion is wetted or not. When once the lower part of the ball gets dust-dry, it is no easy task to moisten it without dipping it into a vessel of water. When any plant looks sickly, or evinces any flaccidity in the leaves, and the soil is moist on the top, turn it out of the pot, and probably the soil will be found dust-dry at a few inches from the surface. The water should always run through the hole in the bottom of the pot after its application, and you should continue to fill up the space on the surface until it does. Guard against giving too much water at the roots, for that is as injurious as an insufficient supply.

Give liberal ventilation as soon as the stock has recovered from the check received in repotting, and increase it as the growth progresses. Although a moist and warm atmosphere is essential to a healthy growth, it must not be kept too close, or the shoots will be weak and long-jointed. When the growth is completed, harden off by opening the ventilators night and day, and then place out of doors, in a shady and rather sheltered position, until the middle or end of September. A light, airy greenhouse, with a temperature of 40° or 45°, is all that is required during the winter months; and give the treatment already advised during the following spring and summer. Good specimens can be, and are, grown without a taste of artificial heat, excepting what is necessary to keep the frost out; but to grow them like the magnificent specimens staged at the metropolitan exhibitions, the preceding directions must be strictly followed.

When a nine-inch pot is reached, a shift once in two years will be quite often enough, unless large specimens are required at the earliest moment possible. Extra care will be requisite in watering during the second year, to prevent them suffering from drought, without them being kept too wet. Water with rain-water at all times, except when they are making new growth the second year after a shift, and then water with weak liquid manure, made by steeping sheep- or cow-manure in rain-water, and allowing a sufficient time to settle before using. It should be diluted with soft-water until paler than pale ale.

With regard to training the specimens into shape the pyramidal form is perhaps the best. Those who intend to train should take them in hand in a young state, for it is a difficult affair to get an old plant into shape after being allowed to grow wild for several years.