:^3^ State IlorlicuUural Society. 



first planting fails you will have another chance. My best stlccess 

 in wintering young pansy plants is in leaving them alone just where 

 they grew. I have tried transplanting them in late October to cold 

 frames and to various sorts of sheltered situations, and never saved a 

 third of the plants I moved. On the other hand, plants that I have cov- 

 ered very thinly in the seed bed with coarse litter, so thinly that the 

 young plants show through here and there all over, have invariably 

 come through with little or no loss. Pansy plants, no matter how small, 

 need no protection against any cold that we ever have in this climate. 

 What they do need is just enough covering to save them from the 

 surface thawing of such days as we had the first of this week. Trans- 

 plant them to where you want them to bloom as early in March as 

 the ground is in workable condition, having first made it very rich by 

 the liberal admixture of thoroughly rotten manure. Cover them 

 again very lightly with straw, which may remain until the ground no 

 longer freeezes at night, keep the ground mellow, pick the bed clean as 

 frequently as every third day, or at least pick the faded blooms that often, 

 see that the bed has a good soaking, not a mere sprinkling, every four or 

 five days, and you vnll have pansies from early April until even hardy 

 chrysanthemums are frosted, which means until close to Thanksgiving, 

 a longer period of bloom, I think, than is possible with any other 

 flower ordinarily grown from seed. 



Next to pansies, perhaps the most thoroughly satisfactory flowers 

 grown from seed are sweet peas, concerning which there are many 

 popular fallacies. One of these fallacies is that sweet peas must always 

 be planted in north and south rows; another that they must not be 

 trained on wire netting, because the sun heats the netting until the netting 

 burns the vines; another that sweet peas must not be planted on the 

 south side of a fence, and another that sweet peas must never be planted 

 in the same place two years in succession. There is a grain of reason 

 in each of these fallacies, but so little that very unimportant considera- 

 tions may easily outweigh them. Sweet peas do exhaust the ground, 

 which must be heavily fertilized if crop is to follow crop, but for two 

 or three years the deterioration from season to season will scarcely 

 be noticed. Likewise, peas planted on the south side of a fence may 

 require more water than those grown where the heat of the sun has less 

 drying power, but just as fine peas can be grown south of a fence as 

 anywhere, and if that is where you want them, there is the place to 

 plant them. The two things to avoid in planting sweet peas are shade 

 and water. Water standing in the trenches will rot the seed before it 

 comes up or make the plants yellow, and sickly afterward. If you want 



