What Shall We Do Now? by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (unputdownable books .TXT) 📕

For simple gardening the following tools are needed:—spade, trowel, hoe, rake, watering-can with a fine rose, syringe. They should all be strong and good. Besides these tools you will need either wooden labels or other home-made means of marking seeds, some strong sticks to use as supports for tall-growing plants, and tape to tie them up with. A pair of gloves—any old ones will do—is very necessary.

Plants should never be watered when the sun is shining on them. Early morning in spring, and late afternoon or early evening in summer, is the best time. It is best to water with water which has had the chill taken from it by standing in the sun or in the house. In watering seedlings and tiny plants, keep the rose on your watering-can; but with big plants it is better to take off the rose and pour the water gently, waiting every now and then for it to sink in round their roots. If the ground is very dry and baked, break up the surface of it round the plants with a rake, or push a fork carefully into the earth. This will help the water to sink in.

Water very regularly during hot and dry weather. It is very hard on your plants to give them a splendid drink one day and to forget all about them for a week.

Ferns should have a gentle spray bath every afternoon if you want to keep them fresh and green, and all leaves look the brighter for a shower from your watering-can.

Perennial plants, annuals, and rose-trees will greatly benefit if watered with slop-water while they are flowering.

If your garden is very small, but is against a sunny wall, the growing room can be increased by fixing a number of pockets, made of wood or of flower-pots, against the wall. These should be filled with good soil, and in them wallflowers, pinks, bulbs of different kinds, Wandering Jew, and some varieties of wild-flowers, etc., can be planted.

The first thing to do when a plot has been given to you, is to mark it off clearly with a border. There are several ways of doing this. Gardens are sometimes bordered with escallop shells, which are neat enough but seem rather out of place among flowers. Tiles make another tidy artificial border; but the best is made of natural rough stones from six to twelve inches long. These stones, which should be sunk into a groove, are soon covered with patches of green moss, and if between their irregular ends you drop a few seeds of low growing annuals, such as candytuft; or plant little pieces of thyme, blue forget-me-not, or any kind of rockfoil or stonecrop, the border will become one of the prettiest things in the garden. If you prefer a growing boundary, a very nice stiff little hedge can be made by sowing endive in a line all round the garden, and, after allowing it to run to seed, cutting and trimming it. But of course there is no natural border to compare with box; but to get a good box hedge is a tedious matter.

The seeds of all annuals can be sown from March until June according to the locality. Any one in the neighborhood who has gardened for some years can tell you when to plant better than any catalogue. The seeds of favorite flowers should be sown several times at intervals of a fortnight, so that you may have a succession of them through summer and autumn.

Before sowing any seeds, see that the soil is nicely broken up, and remove any stones.

When you have decided where to sow the different seeds, take away a little earth from each place and sow the seeds very thinly—remembering that each plant must be from four inches to twelve inches apart; cover lightly with the earth you took out and press it down firmly with your trowel. Then mark the place with little pieces of white wood, on which the names of the seeds have been written with an indelible pencil. It is much easier to sow the tiny seeds thinly if you first mix them with a little sand. These must be only just covered by a very fine sprinkling of earth; but sweet-pea and nasturtium must be sown deeper.

Begin to thin out the seedlings very soon after they appear, and be very careful not to pull up too many. It is easiest to thin out when the soil is wet. When the seedlings are two inches high only those which you wish to keep should be left in. It is not very easy to say exactly how much room to leave the different plants, but plants which will be six inches high should be about three inches apart; those which will be one foot high about six inches, and so on. Godetia, nasturtium, love-in-a-mist, sweet-pea, cornflower, and larkspur seedlings can be transplanted when about two inches high, if you find you want them where they have not been sown. To do this water the ground well first, and then pull the seedlings out so gently that none of their tiny fibrous roots are snapped; and, if possible, bring away a little earth with each. Re-plant them as quickly as you can, making for each a little hole big enough for the roots to spread out in. Hold the seedling in position, and fill in with very moist earth; or else, after you have made the hole, fill it up with water, then put back some of the earth and stir it up into a sort of paste, and put the seedling in this, filling up the hole with the rest of the earth. Seedlings that have been transplanted must be kept moist until they have taken a good start, and if possible they should be shaded with a branch of evergreen, for they droop very quickly in the heat.

All seedlings must be watered gently and often. If you notice how quickly the sun dries the surface of the ground, you will see how necessary it is to keep the ground moist until the roots get bigger and go down deep into the earth.

It is most important to know what the baby-plants will look like when they come up, because one has to weed hard in the warm showery weather, and if one is not careful, mignonette, sweet-peas, and poppies may go on the rubbish heap, and chickweed and purseley be left on the flower-bed; which, although it is what the birds like, will, later, be very disheartening to you. Of course, if your seeds are well marked, there will be less difficulty, but even then weeds will come up amongst them. The only safe way is to get to know the appearance of all the seedlings, and to help you to remember it is a good thing to make little drawings of them in your garden note-book.

Some seeds, such as cornflowers, godetias, and poppies, can be sown in the autumn. They will stand the winter as a rule and will make finer plants and blossom earlier than if sown in spring. They should be sown thinly in open ground.

Any good catalogue will give you a list of annuals suitable for your purposes and with a little advice from an older gardener you will have no difficulty in selecting wisely.

These are best sown in May. If the garden is full they may be sown in an ordinary wooden box filled with several inches of good earth. Transplant them to their permanent places later on.

Remember that all plants will flower for a much longer time if the flowers are kept cut and any faded ones taken off.

The best seed is saved from plants set apart for that purpose; for good seed comes from the first and finest flowers and not from those left over at the end of the flowering season. These plants should be sown in a little patch by themselves, should be allowed to run to seed, and carefully tended until the seed-pods are ripe enough to be gathered. If, therefore, you have not a large garden, it is best to buy most of your seed each year, using a little of your own, from which, however, you must not always expect the finest flowers. If you have no wish to keep any of your flowers merely for seeding purposes but still want, while getting flowers from them, also to save a few seeds, the thing to do is to mark one or two of the finest blossoms with a tiny piece of wool or silk (it is better when it is the color of the flower) and let it go to seed. Take special care of the plant, and cut off all other flowers as you wish to gather them. Watch the seed-pods when they are formed, and when they are ripe—that is, brown and dry—cut them off, break them open, and spread the seeds out. Look them over very carefully to see that there are no maggots amongst them, and if they are at all damp leave them in a warm place until they are dry. Then make them up in little packets, clearly labeled with their names, colors, and the date, and put them away in a dry place until next spring. In saving sunflower seeds choose your best sunflower, and when the petals have fallen tie it up in muslin, or else the birds will steal a march on you. In gathering sweet-pea pods one has to be rather clever, because when they are quite ripe they burst open and the seeds fly out suddenly, sometimes just as one is going to cut them. In one poppy pod there are hundreds of seeds, enough to stock a garden, and the same is the case with the pretty pods of love-in-a-mist. Nasturtium seeds should be picked up when they fall on the ground, and spread out until quite brown and dry. Cornflowers, which have little seeds like shaving-brushes, generally sow themselves, and marigolds do too, but they are both easy to save. In choosing a place in which to keep seeds through the winter remember that damp is not the only danger. Mice enjoy them thoroughly.

Perennials are plants which, although they die down in winter, come up again and blossom every following spring or summer. They can be grown from seed, but, with a few exceptions, this is a long and troublesome part of gardening, and it is best to get them from friends or from a nurseryman.

The best months for planting perennials are November, February, and March. Dig a hole large enough to take the roots when well spread out, hold your plant in position, with the junction of stem and root just below the level of the earth, and fill in gently with fine soil, pressing it down firmly all round the plant, and if there is danger of frost protect the plants with straw, bracken, or a mulching of manure. Never water if there is any likelihood of frost.

Here follow some general remarks concerning the treatment of perennials through the spring, summer, and autumn:—

In the spring, slugs, which eat the tender new leaves of many plants, can be kept away by sprinkling coal-ash around them.

In hot weather, water perennials regularly and well, breaking up earth around them so that the water sinks in easily.

All tall-growing perennials will need stakes to support them. Care must be taken not to injure the roots when putting these in. The stalks can be tied with twine.

Perennials can