CHAPTER VI.. Slips in the Portable Greenhouse--Cold or Hot.

SLIPS IN THE PORTABLE GREENHOUSE--COLD OR HOT.

Art of sticking Slips.--How the Slips take Root.--Slips in the Cold Portable Greenhouse.--Slips of Dwarf Succulent Plants.--What is necessary to make them take Root.--Slips from Leaves and Fragments of Leaves.--Slips of Begonias.--Slips of Dwarf Bengal Roses.--Of China Roses.--Of Pelargoniums.--Of Indian Chrysanthemums.--Slips in the Hot Portable Greenhouse.--How this Greenhouse is constructed.--Slips of Camellias destined to be Grafted.

Art of Sticking Slips.

The prodigious multiplicity of resources contrived by Nature for the propagation of plants is assuredly one of the most curious of all the facts revealed by the study of vegetable physiology. Life is disseminated with such profusion in all the parts of plants, that with many of them the least fragment placed in favorable circumstances becomes a complete plant. The art of rearing from slips rests upon the knowledge of facts of this nature. If it has never happened to you to stick any, or to see any stuck, I will inform you that a slip is a part of a plant detached from the mother plant and put in the earth, in the hope that it will be able to take root there.

What is necessary to make a slip take root? It is necessary for it to live long enough on its own vital energy for young roots to form, and to draw nourishment from the soil. When the tissue of the plant is soft, and contains a good deal of water, and when the branch that is detached to serve as a slip remains exposed to the air, the slip will not take root; it dries too rapidly; the operation fails. On the contrary, roots always form when, by the exclusion of the external air, evaporation is abated; whilst, at the same time, the lower part of the slip is in a medium kept constantly moist, which solicits its taking root.

Slips in the Cold Portable Greenhouse.

Already, from what I have said, ladies, you have a glimpse of the utility that your cold portable greenhouse will possess for propagating every kind of plant by slips. We may begin by your pretty dwarf succulent plants, detached fragments of which will, under the shelter which it affords, take root with marvellous docility. Take, for example, a charming opuntia, and separate one of its little shoots, by cutting it at the base with a very sharp penknife. If you put this shoot in the earth as a slip at the moment that you cut it, the surface of the wound in contact with the earth will rot, and not a root will come forth. To be successful, you must lay the slip on one of the shelves of your étagère, and leave it for two or three days, that the wound may begin to scar over before it is planted; when this takes place, plant it as if it had roots--and indeed it will not be long before it has them. To assure yourself of this, you need not pull it up, as children do, who, when they have put a bean in the earth, take it up once or twice a day to see if it is going to sprout--so that it never comes up. So soon as your slip has taken possession of the earth with its young roots, it will not fail to advise you of it by giving birth to little shoots at the upper part. The growing of the upper part of any plant whatever, propagated by slips, is the most certain sign of the existence of young roots. All the dwarf succulent plants of the garden on the étagère can, like the opuntia, be propagated by slips, in the cold portable greenhouse; only taking care that the part separated as a slip be allowed to dry and begin to form a scab by contact with the air before planting it.

Slips from Leaves.

If you have renewed the contents of your flower-stand every season, you will have at the proper time achimenes in bloom. This pretty plant is easily cultivated; and its numerous tubulated flowers, nearly the same in form with those of the paulownia, are in color of a beautiful light violet, or of a fiery red, regularly marked with yellow and purple within. Take off a leaf of achimenes and stick it by its stem; it will take root, and this single leaf will in a short time become a perfect plant, similar to the one from which it was detached. But if the species that you desire to propagate by this means is rare, and you possess but one leaf, for which you are indebted to the kindness of an amateur, split this leaf down through the principal rib; split afterwards the two halves in four or five pieces, through the side ribs; and these fragments, treated as slips, will not fail to take root. But, as this plant is of very loose tissue, and evaporation might cause the slips to perish in a few days, even in your cold greenhouse, you will act prudently if, besides the shelter which it affords, you cover them separately, each with a small glass turned upside down.

Slips of Begonia.

Another genus of plants, not less agreeable, the genus Begonia, is propagated by slips of leaves in a manner somewhat different. The stems of the leaves of begonias are of a cylindrical form; those of the begonia manicata, or cuffed begonia, are ornamented with an elegant fringe for about one half of their length. If you stick one of these leaves in your portable greenhouse, do not be frightened, if, after the lapse of some days, the entire leaf fades and then draws up as if it had been shrivelled by a violent sun-stroke; the vegetable life has withdrawn into the stem; the operation has not been necessarily unsuccessful. When the leaf is dry, take the stem out of the earth; it will not yet have roots, properly speaking, but all around its lower edge you will distinguish little swellings composing a sort of roll, tolerably prominent: these are the rudiments of the roots ready to come out. This leaf-stem, although hollow within, is thick and fleshy. Split it into five or six slips, down its length; and each of these slips, provided it has at its base a portion of that little roll from which the roots are to come out, will become, in a short time, a fine plant of begonia manicata. Just as many pieces as you have been able to split that stem into, just so many thriving slips will you have; all will take root.

An indefinite variety of plants, as well those generally found only in warmed greenhouses as those which are seen in others, can be thus propagated. It will be for you an inexhaustible source of recreation, and at the same time a precious resource from which to renew the contents of the flower-stand and étagère, at all seasons.

Rose Slips.

To the above you can add a large collection of roses of diminutive size, selected from the series of Bengalese and Chinese roses; the Lilliputian Bengals, which are reared in a pot of the size of an egg-cup; the Chinese dwarfs, of a bright red, which live very well in a tumbler of the ordinary size. The least fragment of a branch of one of these, stuck in the cold portable greenhouse, will take root and display its flowers the first year.

Slips of Pelargoniums and Chrysanthemums.

Do not forget to stick also a full supply of the prettiest species of fancy pelargoniums and chrysanthemums of India; especially pompone chrysanthemums, charming little plants, very prolific in flowers. They bloom all the winter, and present, we may say, with the exception of pure blue, all the shades of the rainbow, and, in addition to these, the purest white, and a deep purple, so deep as to be almost black.

These chrysanthemums possess, as regards slips, a peculiar property, worthy of your attention; they furnish slips at all the various stages of their vegetation. Of such kinds as accord, in their natural dimensions, with the space that you have reserved for them, take, for sticking, young shoots between one and two inches in length. These slips will quickly take root, and in due time attain the normal size of their species; after which they will bloom. On the other hand, if you wish to stick some whose dimensions greatly exceed the space that can be disposed of in their favor, wait until the flower buds terminating the upper extremities of branches have attained about half of their size. Then detach such branches for slips, and plant them in pots, where they will very soon take root; their buds will continue to develop, and you will obtain as fine a bloom as that which remains on the entire plant. These slips, however, will not grow; they remain of the same size as when first planted.

Slips in the Warm Portable Greenhouse.

Until now, ladies, I have spoken to you of such slips only as can be reared with success in the cold portable greenhouse. But you may rear a great many more, and these taken from the most interesting plants, if, for your cold greenhouse a warm one be substituted.

To say nothing of form, which may vary according to taste, the essential difference between these two portable greenhouses consists in one of them being warmed at will; to which purpose its shape and construction must, of course, be adapted. It must contain a lamp and a little reservoir for water; this reservoir having an earthen-ware cover, upon which the pots with the slips are placed. This cover is pierced with a hole, into which a funnel may be placed, for the purpose of renewing the water as it evaporates; and there must be lateral holes in the reservoir, for the steam to escape through. Underneath this apparatus is the place for the lamp,--generally a spirit lamp,--which is lighted only when you wish to raise the temperature of the greenhouse. Although the heat produced by the flame of the lamp is not very great, it suffices to warm the water in the reservoir, and the other contents of the greenhouse, to the degree requisite for maintaining its atmosphere at the proper temperature--say at from fifty-three to sixty-four degrees of the thermometer.

Slips of Camellias.

Provided with this addition to your resources, you may now add greatly to the variety of your floral decorations, and, whilst doing this, enjoy the pleasure of watching the growth of plants which refuse to take root in the cold greenhouse, but prove perfectly conformable to your wishes in this respect when provided with lodgings better suited to their tastes.

Let us begin by sticking slips of camellia there. This king of the shrubs of the cold greenhouse experiences great difficulty in making his start in life there. The labor of striking root proves generally too great for his vital powers, unless aided by artificial heat. Thus aided, however, as they now are in your warm portable greenhouse, these slips will form their roots in the space of from fifteen to twenty days.

You are already aware, ladies, that the most beautiful varieties of the camellia, although they can take root from the slips, produce, by this means of propagating them, only ill-shaped, puny plants, that are little disposed to flower well. Your slips should be taken only from single-flowered camellias; or, if from the double-flowered, then the white or the pink only. From these you can obtain all the slips you need; and these slips will become shrubs as vigorous as you can desire. By grafting on these shrubs, when a year or eighteen months old, you may multiply the choicest species and varieties; their bloom will be all that you can wish.

Grafting is another charming operation of horticulture, which you could not easily realize in the cold portable conservatory. In the warm one, on the contrary, you may graft all sorts of ornamental shrubs, and the success of your grafts is assured beforehand; not one will fail.