History.-Causes of Failure.-Potting.-Manure.-Selection and Preparation of Bulbs. -Treatment of Flower.- Planting for Succession. -Single and Double Varieties. (198) POW can I bloom my Tube Roses? They grow well, they produce abundance of foliage, healthy as could be desired, but no flowers. Yet their culture is very easy. They will bloom freely with but little care; yet you must learn how to do it; and this secret was communicated to us a few years since by an ardent lover of this beautiful flower, who proved it by showing us spikes of bloom with from twenty to thirty flowers. The tube rose is a native of the East Indies, and was introduced about the year 1630. It has since been in general cultivation, and is now grown in all warm climates as an out-door plant; with us it will not stand the winter. Our dried roots are annually imported from Italy, where they ripen their bulbs in the open air. The great want of success in growing this plant is caused by too poor a soil, too little water, and too little heat at the root; the plant would probably bloom were the latter need supplied, but we are not content to merely bloom a plant, but must bloom it well. A hot-bed is necessary: it may be of the simplest kind, the heating material being a few wheelbarrow loads of dung. How to best make the hot-bed we will describe in a future chapter. Now suppose the heat is up in the hot-bed, and we have selected tubers as soon as opened by the importer, thus securing the strongest and best-grown roots, known by the size, and firmness even to the top, and the absence of offsets or their marks, being sure that there is no old blossom stalk, evidence of exhaustion. Time, about the first of April; prepare seven-inch pots, with the usual drainage; we prefer charcoal to any thing else; over this place about four inches of old, dry cow manure, picked up in the pasture, and preserved for future use (the older the better), broken fine, but not sifted. Then fill the pot nearly full of a compost of nearly equal parts of sand, loam, peat, and last year's hot-bed, with a slight admixture of charcoal dust; then prepare the roots by removing the outer scale or coating, so as to detect embryo offsets. These carefully remove with a knife, or the thumb nail, so as to lessen future operations of that kind. This done, plunge them in the compost, just covering them from sight, and then fill the pot with spent bark or tan, and plunge the pot to the rim in the tan, which, by the way, we deem the very best material in which to plunge pots in the hot-bed, retaining well the heat and moisture, and, withal, pleasant to work in. Soon, they begin to strike root, and the foliage to show its tips; then give slight waterings, until indications of "spindling" appear; then increase the water so much as to solve, to some extent, the broken manure, and thereby allow of consolidation, by firm pressure upon the top surface; watch closely for offsets, and, as they appear, split them off by inserting the thumb between them and the parent, thus keeping the strength where it is wanted. The best practice is to retain them in the pots, and keep the pots together in the hotbed, unless they become so tall as to interfere with the sashes. Keeping them in pots is preferable to turning them out, not only because thus the supply of water can be controlled, but because they can be moved at pleasure. When blossoms begin to appear, remove them to an arbor, or any sheltered place, to secure shade to some extent, and On the thus preserve the natural delicacy of the flowers. approach of frosty weather, they can be housed without the shock they would suffer from "lifting and potting." If kept neatly tied to rods, they are not unacceptable in the parlor. |