The Children's Book of GardeningSidgwick, Alfred, Mrs.
General
The Children's Book of Gardening
Sidgwick, Alfred, Mrs.
Children's gardens; Gardening -- Juvenile literature
This is a good biennial to start with, because every seed comes up and
comes quickly. Sow thinly on a partly shaded patch of ground, and prick
out when the seedlings have four good leaves. Do this on a showery
day, if possible, and plant in rows ten inches apart each way. It is
important to sow your seed early in the spring, because where the
winter is severe the plants should be in their permanent quarters by
May or June. If you transplant them late in the autumn, they suffer
greatly from frost. In London market-gardens the seed is sown early
in February; the plants are put out in May, and by Christmas are in
flower. A seedling Wallflower has a tap-root as well as fibrous roots,
and this is why the seedling should be pricked out once before it is
transplanted to its permanent quarters. If you left it where it was
sown it would send down a great root like a carrot, and then when
you tried to move the plant you would kill it. Many gardeners pinch
off the tap-root when they prick out, and then the Wallflower makes
fibrous roots that can be safely transplanted. Mr. Robinson says that
a well-grown Wallflower in a London market-garden could not be covered
by a bushel basket, so now you know what size your plants _ought_ to
be, and how many you will have room for in your border. If you buy them
ready-made late in the autumn, you will probably find that each plant
has two bare, lanky stalks, with a miserable little bunch of leaves at
the top; and when a frost comes they will look so dejected that you
will pull them up and throw them away.
PANSIES AND TUFTED PANSIES (VIOLA TRICOLOR).
The Pansies, or Heart’s-ease, and Tufted Pansies (known to nurserymen
as Violas) can be treated as annuals, biennials, or perennials,
according to position, climate, and soil. In a Cornish garden from
October to Christmas we had Pansies in flower from seed sown at the end
of May, so they were annuals. But we had put them in their permanent
places that autumn, because we wanted them to live through the winter
and make the border gay the summer following, when they became
biennials. At the end of the summer we kept the best of them to flower
another year, and, if they liked, a year after that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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