be and are raised by the hundreds of
thousands from the single eye to a cutting, with a loss of not five per
cent in the aggregate, and often not one per cent. It is very evident
that with new or scarce plants this is an enormous average, as by its
means firms can import the new European plants in the spring, at perhaps
very high rates, start them into immediate, rapid growth, and from half
a dozen plants to work on, maybe in the next spring markets have
hundreds for sale.
This is all new as managed by us old 'uns in former times, but he who
expects to be up with the present day and cater for that class of
patronage, must take the new and not the old way of doing things, or he
will, in the vernacular of the streets, "get left."
As we are on this particular topic, however, and as the amateur window
plant-grower may want to propagate some little stock as well, even if
not on these "high-falutin" ways, it might not be amiss to say that
beyond the methods of "slipping" here and there cuttings in and among
others growing in pots, or, mayhap, in a pot all by themselves, they can
readily root lots of plants in a water and sand bath, which is nothing
more than taking a deep saucer, putting half an inch of sand in the
bottom, filling up the saucer full of water, and keeping it full; stick
your cuttings into this, place right in the sunniest spot of your
window, and they will grow about as certain, many of them, as if treated
by the florist's more portentious method. Likely the reason of all this
is, the water keeps the cuttings from wilting long enough for them to
put forth their efforts for existence in the shape of new roots,
obtained from the stored up material in the cuttings, and as soon as
this is done they become new individual plants, requiring only to be
transferred into a suitable medium of earth to go on as an independent,
but similar existence to the plant from which they were obtained.
EDGAR SANDERS.
* * * * *
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