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Hybrid Wichuraianas and Hybrid Poly-

About the last of July or the first of August, when the blooming season is over, it is well to cut out some of the oldest and weakest canes; this gives new wood a better opportunity to develop and it becomes the flowering wood of the following season. The older wood blooms to some extent but not as well as the growth of the previous year. After this August pruning it will hardly be necessary in the following spring to do more than cut out the dead wood and keep the plant within the prescribed bounds, which may be determined by the arbor or trellis on which it is grown. The new canes springing from the base which have grown during the previous season should remain untouched, excepting that the ends or tops of the longest should be somewhat shortened. The same process used in pruning recently planted Hybrid Teas applies in the case of newlyplanted climbers, and especially weaker-growing varieties planted the previous autumn, viz., pruning back "wickedly" in the spring to a few eyes. This gives the roots less work to do and insures good growth for the following year. It gives no chance for flowers during the first summer, but at best the blooms on a newly-planted climber would be poor; the great point is that such cutting back gives the plant a better chance to become established and secures good flowering wood the second year and thereafter. But, if you insist upon trying for some flowers the first summer on newly-planted stock, be sure that such climbers as you do not cut back have wellestablished root systems with fibrous feeding roots and that they were planted the previous autumn, their root systems having been noted at that time.