The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life RationallyLoudon, Mrs. (Jane)
General
The Lady's Country Companion; Or, How to Enjoy a Country Life Rationally
Loudon, Mrs. (Jane)
Cooking; Country life; Home economics
Vines are generally not planted in the border till about a year old,
and they are best struck from cuttings of one bud or eye each, with
about half an inch of stem left above and below the eye; the cutting is
then planted in a small pot (60), and covered with soil half an inch
thick, after which the pot is plunged to the rim in a common hotbed,
or into the tan-pit in the centre of the vinery, covering it in the
latter case with a hand-glass; the object being to keep the young plant
growing in a moist heat of 60°. The young plants should be afterwards
shifted into larger and larger pots, as they require it; and their
stems, which will grow rapidly, should be trained either to a single
stick or to a framework of sticks tied together, according as the plant
is wanted to be spreading or trained to a single stem. If the eye has
been a large and healthy one, and the wood of the stem from which it
was taken firm and well ripened, the cuttings will grow rapidly. Care
must be taken to give the young plant a gentle sprinkling of water
every four or five days, and to let it have plenty of air, and not too
much heat from the bed. The water should be given at night, and the
glasses of the frame should be shut close immediately, as the steam
thus generated is found very beneficial to the young plant. As when
the plant is shifted the first time the stem, or cane as it is called,
is generally six or eight inches long, great care must be taken not
to injure either it or the spongioles of the roots in shifting; and,
as the stem or cane is of course always longer every time the plants
are shifted, additional care is required every time of performing the
operation. While the plant is in the hotbed, the wires or tendrils, and
also the weak lateral shoots, must be pinched off as fast as they are
produced.
If the cutting was made in the first week of March, and has been
properly treated, it will have a strong stem of ten or twelve feet
long, and perhaps more, by the middle of June or the beginning of July.
Many gardeners advise planting the vines out at this season, as they
say they grow more vigorously, and form better wood, with only their
stems in the hothouse, than when they are confined to the moist close
heat of the bed. Other gardeners, however, keep their young vines in
the pots till the following February, when the canes are generally five
feet long, and as thick as the little finger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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