Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/73

Rh divide it into as many plants as it has centres of growth, each portion having a few roots attached. The best way to learn the art is to practice on stools of chrysanthemums in spring, for they are easy to divide, and the destruction of a few by unskilful handling will not entail a serious loss.

A considerable number of useful plants may be propagated from leaves, and the practice is of great value when it is desired to obtain stock of an expensive variety. In the case of begonias and coleus, which may be increased in this way, the leaves are merely laid on a surface of moist sand, and kept in their places with little wooden pegs. Sometimes the leaves are clipped partly across by a pair of scissors to hasten the production of roots and buds. In the case of several succulents, such as echeverias, the leaves are removed so as to leave a clean scar on the stem, and are fixed with their bases on or in a surface of sand by driving a little peg through them. The time to remove the leaves for the purpose is when they are “ripe,” that is full grown, quite mature, but not yet showing signs of decay.

consists in providing at every stage of the life of a plant conditions favorable to increase of the individuals or full development in any form desired (and possible) of individual specimens. The treatment to which the principal groups or classes of plants are to be subjected for the attainment of these ends will be described in the chapters that follow, but a few important generalities may be usefully disposed of now. In any and every case it is well to wait until a plant has filled with its roots the pot it occupies before shifting it into one of a larger size. In any and every case it is well to “stop,” that is, pinch the points of the shoots, or prune with the knife, some little time before the shift is made, and to give the shift when the new shoots that the stopping process has caused the plant to produce have grown about half an inch or so. In other words, never stop and shift at the same time. A “large shift” means transferring the plant to a pot two or three sizes larger than the one it occupied before the shift. This practice is followed with advantage in the case of fast-growing and free-rooting plants of soft texture, such as the hydrangea, for example. A “small shift” means transferring to a pot only one size larger, and is the only safe practice with slow growing plants of hard texture, such as the erica. The