William Cotton, Esq., of Wellwood-house, describes the good effects of painting an old garden wall with seal oil and anticorrosion paint. The wall in question was covered with trees, which were every year attacked by blight. Since the operation the trees have borne good fruit, made healthy wood, and been free from the bad consequences of blight.
Mr. John Mearns states, that the red and white Antwerp raspberries may be brought to bear abundantly in August, long after the usual crop of raspberries is past, by the following management. In May he removes the young fruit, bearing shoots, from the canes, leaving in some cases one or two eyes, in others, cutting them clean off. Under either plan, they soon produce an abundance of vigorous new shoots, which blossom freely in July.
Mr. Elias Hildyard, gardener to Sir Thomas Frankland, kills the grub which infests his onion beds by trenching the beds in winter, digging in manure at the same time, and leaving them exposed to the frost in a rough state till the time of sowing.
A mode of inducing fertility in a barren Swan’s-egg pear-tree trained upon a wall, is described by the Rev. John Fisher, of Wavenden, in Buckinghamshire. It consists in twisting and breaking down the side shoots of the main branches in such a way, as to make them pendulous without separating them wholly from the parent limb. In a short time a grumous formation takes place where the fracture has occurred, the wound heals, the flow of the sap is moderated, and fruit buds are formed instead of sterile shoots.
Mr. William Mowbray, gardener to the Earl of Mountnorris, states, that the different species of eatable Passifloras which do not generally produce fruit, may be induced to do so abundantly, if the pollen of other species is applied to their stigmas.
Currants are preserved in perfection in the garden of James Webster, Esq., of Westham, by being covered with bunting when the fruit is fully ripe, care being had to unloose the bunting occasionally from the bottom of the bushes, in order to remove the decaying fallen leaves.
X. Report on the Instruments employed in, and on the Plan of a Journal of Meteorological Observations, kept in the garden of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick. [◊]
This and the following paper we propose to notice in detail on a future occasion. [p170]