Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/89

Rh to a named collection. We will suppose you have secured a few of the finest named varieties, that they have flowered to your satisfaction, and you have now to look out for nursery stock. The first step will be to remove the flower-stems before the flowers have quite finished their career, for if you allow seeds to form you will get no offsets. Put the plants in a cold frame, keep them regularly supplied with water, and take the lights off and let them enjoy full exposure to the weather as soon as the season is advanced enough, and do not on any account allow them to be roasted by a hot sun. They may be planted out in May, but they must not be forgotten afterwards. In the first week of August you may look for offsets. Take them off carefully with a bit of root to each, and put them four or five in a five-inch pot, each offset next the pot and touching it: give them a sprinkle and shut them up in a cold frame. Keep them close and shaded and regularly sprinkled, and they will soon be plants, when they must be potted off singly in three-inch pots and be sprinkled for a few days and then have plenty of light and air.

Now it must be confessed that although the cineraria is a greenhouse plant, it can always be better grown in a brick pit than in any greenhouse, for an equable temperature and a certain degree of humidity which does not reach the stage we term “damp” is required for its perfect development. But not one degree of frost must ever touch a cineraria, so the greenhouse is the proper place to winter the stock unless the pits are heated. From the time the offsets are well started until the beginning of November, the plants should be shifted on as they fill their pots with roots, and six-inch pots are the largest size they can be put in the first season, and, as a rule, very nice plants may be made in five-inch pots, if they are assisted when pot bound with weak manure water. It is a nice task to keep the same plants on from year to year, but if it is well managed you may have them three feet across in the third year, forming gorgeous hemispheres of colour. During winter use as little fire-heat as possible; just sufficient to keep out the frost, with the aid of a covering on the glass. When exposed to much artificial heat the leaves will curl, and the plants be more or less spoiled. On the other hand, a little artificial warmth in very dull and damp weather will be of considerable service to maintain a sweet moving atmosphere.

Damp and mildew are the principal enemies to the cineraria,