Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

June 9th. — The Strawberry season is beginning. For many years this fruit was poison to me ; now it gives me pleasure to think that I live almost entirely upon it for some weeks in the summer, eating it three times a day, and very little else, according to the practice of Linnaeus, as quoted in March. It is of great importance that anyone who has room to grow Strawberries at all should grow several varieties — early, medium, or late (see catalogues). For ices, creams, jams, &c., I greatly recommend some of the high-flavoured, old-fashioned Hautboys ; they are not very easy to get. The fruit grown on heavy soils round London for the market is often very tasteless ; but one must work away with books and experience to get good Strawberries and a fairly long succession of them. In growing Strawberries, everything depends on making some new rows every year ; layering the runners early, too, makes a great difference in the young plants the next year. ' Dainty Dishes ' has some instructive old- fashioned receipts for Strawberry jam. Strawberries make an excellent compote if boiling syrup is poured over them. Easpberries are much better treated in this way. Currants require stewing. It improves all summer compotes to ice them well before serving. I do not at all despise planting out the old-fashioned scarlet and crimson Geraniums — Pelargoniums, they ought to be called. Old plants are very much better than the small cuttings ; but I have a few of these as well, and pots full of cuttings of the sweet-leaved kinds, of which there are so many varieties, and which are planted out the first JUNE 121 week in June. Among red Geraniums, nothing is so fine and satisfactory as Henry Jacoby ; it is a very steady bloomer, and has a fine rich colour. When you are planting out your Geraniums and cuttings, do not forget that some must be kept back in their pots and given constant care and attention all through the summer for late autumn and winter flowering in the greenhouse. We keep our plants for winter in a cold frame through the summer, and carefully pick off the flower-buds. Raspail is an excellent double variety for winter picking. One the nurserymen call ' Raspail Improved ' is perhaps what it professes to be, though I do not see very much difference. It is because I live in London in the winter that I so much recommend double Geraniums, as the flowers of the single kind require to be gummed before they are packed. If not, they arrive only a little heap of scarlet petals in the paper, beautiful and lovely, but quite useless for putting into water.