Part 11

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Don't be in too great a hurry to obtain results. Some persons think to accomplish this by frequent applications of strong fertilizers in large quantities. This will force plants to a rapid and always unhealthy growth, from which, later on, there is sure to be a most discouraging reaction. Be content with a healthy growth, and give your plants a chance to make that naturally. More plants are injured by overfeeding than from any other cause.

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Don't think that you can learn all there is to know about gardening from books. Books will furnish the theory. You must contribute experience in order to attain success.

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Don't neglect your plants while they are growing. Then is just the time to give them the training that is necessary to make them shapely. The fact is, plants are very much like children in the family. Let them have their own way about everything while they are growing up and you will find that when they have grown up they are not at all like what you would like to have them, in many respects, and you don't see how you are going to make them conform to your ideas of what they ought to be, since it is impossible to make children of them again and give you another chance at their development. Begin with the training of your plants while they are small, and train them as they grow.

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Don't treat all your plants alike. Study their peculiarities and give them such treatment as will fit those peculiarities. To illustrate this idea: a calla likes a good deal of water; a geranium is satisfied with a moderately moist soil; a cactus does best when allowed to get really dry at certain seasons. If we were to treat these three plants alike, what do you suppose the result would be? Don't ignore the peculiarities of your plants if you want them to do well.

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Don't neglect to prepare for an annual invasion of your roses by bugs, worms, and insects. You can safely count on their coming, but if you are prepared for it you can speedily put the enemy to rout. The best plan is to act on the offensive. Head off the pests by making applications of nicoticide before they make their appearance. You can do this, for, if their advance-agent arrives and finds the tang of tobacco all over the plants, he will go back and advise the others to seek more agreeable quarters. Begin to spray your bushes early in the season, and keep on doing so until after the flowering period is over. There will be no likelihood of an invasion after that, as the enemies of the rose do their deadly work early in the season.

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Don't get the idea for a moment, as so many do, that all you need to do to have a fine lot of plants is to put some soil--any kind that happens to be handiest--in a pot, set out a plant in it, and, presto! you will have just as fine a lot of plants as your neighbor who searches here and there and everywhere until she finds just the kind of soil that experience tells her the plants must have if she would have good ones. She gives some of her time daily to caring for them, while you expect your plants to take care of themselves. That will never answer. If you do your share of the work the plants will do theirs, but you must not expect them to do all, any more than you must expect them to make a strong, healthy growth in a soil that is unsuited to their requirements or sadly lacking in nutriment.

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Don't build up a great fire in stove or furnace if you discover that your plants have been nipped by frost, thinking to save them by "thawing them out." Heat at such a time is the very thing needed to complete the misfortune. Put them at once in a room where the temperature can be kept just a little above the frost-point, and shower them thoroughly with cold water. This will extract the frost from them so gradually that it will be possible to save many of them unless they are badly frozen. Keep them in a cool room for three or four days. It may be necessary to cut away most, or all, of the branches of some of them. Unless the degree of cold to which they were subjected was sufficient to freeze the soil in the pot, many of them will throw up new shoots from their roots after a little; therefore don't throw out a plant that has been obliged to part with all its top until it has been given a chance to make a new start in life.

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Don't put your house plants out of doors for the summer until the weather has become warm and can be depended on to remain so. The first of June will be quite early enough.

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Don't plant them out in the garden-beds, thinking thereby to save yourself the work of taking care of them during the summer and of benefiting them at the same time. Of course they will take care of themselves there, and very likely make a much more luxuriant growth than they would in pots, but when fall comes and you have to lift and repot them you will find that more hard work is required of you than you would have expended on them throughout the summer if you had kept them in pots. As for the benefit to the plants--where will it come in? They will have made such a rampant growth of roots that most of them will have to be sacrificed in reducing the earth containing them to the size of the pots you put them into, and this at the very time when the poor plants ought to be at their best in order to successfully withstand the unfavorable conditions resulting from the change from outdoors to indoors. Plants treated in this manner receive a check that they seldom fully recover from during the entire winter. Instead of saving yourself work and doing a kindness to your plants, you have done just the contrary.

XIX

A CHAPTER OF HELPFUL HINTS

In some of the foregoing chapters I have had something to say about the advisability of using seed in which each color is kept by itself in order to secure the greatest possible degree of color-harmony in the garden.

Many persons tell us that they cannot afford to pay the extra prices which the seedsmen put on unmixed seed. It is true that it costs more than the seed in which all colors are jumbled together, and it is also true that plants grown from it are really no better than those grown from mixed seed, but the fact remains that it gives so much more satisfactory results, from an artistic standpoint, that it is not throwing money away, as some claim, to make use of it. Of course if one gets as much pleasure from a mass of color without regard to harmony as from fewer colors all in perfect harmony with one another, it would hardly be worth while to invest more money in such seed. But where the finest possible effects are desired I contend that unmixed seed is cheapest, in that sense of the term that means the greatest satisfaction.

There is a way by which unmixed seed can be obtained without its really costing each person more than mixed seed. Every amateur gardener knows that more plants of a kind can be grown from one package of seed than a person cares for in the average-sized garden. Nine times out of ten only part of the seed in the package is sown and the rest is either discarded or given away to friends. Now if those who would like to secure the best results in gardening will get up a seed club among their flower-loving friends, and confine their selection to packages in which each color is by itself, the seed in those packages can be divided among the various members of the club, and each person will have enough to meet her requirements, and this at a less price than she would have to pay for ordinary mixed seed if she were to order alone, because none of the seed would be wasted.

Try the seed-club plan for a season and see if it doesn't work out to your satisfaction.

If you are likely to have more plants of a kind than you care for, don't throw any of the seedlings away when you thin them out. There are poor children in every neighborhood that would be delighted to get them. Never waste any plants that are worth growing.

If a plant is wanted for low beds under the windows of the dwelling or near the paths, portulacca is about as satisfactory as anything I know of. It blooms with great profusion throughout the entire season. Its colors range from pure white through pink, yellow, and violet to dark crimson. It is a plant that seems to delight in locations exposed to the hottest sunshine, and in soils so lacking in moisture that ordinary plants would live but a short time in it. It is enabled to do this because of the succulent nature of its foliage. Indeed, the portulacca is a vegetable salamander so far as its ability to stand heat and drought is concerned. Those who have had experience with purslane in the vegetable garden will understand something about the nature of this plant, for the two are closely related.

In furnishing support for vines that clamber over the walls of the house, do not use strips of cloth, as so many do. The cloth is good for a season only. After the vines have become large and heavy their weight will be sufficient to tear the cloth loose from the tacks that held it in place, especially after a heavy rain or in strong winds, and down will come the plant. It will be found impossible to put it back in place in anything like a satisfactory manner. For supporting large, stiff vines I make use of screw-hooks, which are easily inserted in wooden walls. Turn the hooks in until there is just enough room between their points and the wall to admit of slipping the vine in. Not one vine in fifty will work loose from the grip of the hooks.

Some vines are not adapted to this treatment. These I support by using strips of leather instead of cloth. The leather should be soaked in oil for twenty-four hours before using, to make it pliable and water-resisting. Do not use small tacks, as these do not have sufficient hold on the wood to make them dependable. Use nails at least an inch long, with good-sized heads.