Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904New York State College of Agriculture
History
Cornell Nature-Study Leaflets: Being a selection, with revision, from the teachers' leaflets, home nature-study lessons, junior naturalist monthlies and other publications from the College of Agriculture, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1896-1904
New York State College of Agriculture
Natural history; Nature study
This transplanting of plants in the school-room gives a quiet occupation
to boys and girls who for a time may not be engaged in study. The
disobedient child or the would-be "smart" one might better be denied
the privilege. I say "privilege," because the wise teacher will make
window gardening a privilege and not required work. After the
transplanting has been completed and the plants thoroughly soaked with
water, they must be shaded for about twenty-four hours, after which they
had better receive the strong light once more, when they will resume
their growth.
PLANTS NEED WATER.
If plants could feel and talk, they would tell of periods when they had
endured great suffering because of thirst: suffering as great as that
sometimes experienced by travelers in crossing a desert. Often it has
been so great as almost to ruin a plant's constitution. I am often
asked, "How frequently shall I water plants?" It is as difficult to give
a fixed rule for watering as to determine how often a boy should be
allowed a drink. During cool cloudy weather, plants do not require as
much water as when the sun shines bright and hot on them. I can give no
better general direction than this:--water plants when the surface of
the soil seems dry and powder-like, when a pinch of it rolled between
the thumb and finger does not form a little ball. Under conditions in
which the drainage is good, plants should receive water until the
surplus begins to trickle out of the holes at the bottom. If you follow
these directions carefully, your schoolroom garden should afford a good
lot of plants for cultivation at home in the open ground or in boxes.
WHAT YOU MAY PLANT.
As to the kind of seeds to sow, you must be governed by what you most
desire to have in your home garden for summer cultivation. If you are
able to have a garden in the open ground, I would have you make a
selection of both flowers and vegetables. Do not choose a large variety
of either, for children are but little men and women and must shape
their tasks to fit their shoulders. It would be better to have a garden
the size of a horse blanket and have it in good condition all summer
than to have a larger one and allow it to become a wilderness of weeds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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