i6 How to Make a Flower Garden 



How TO Get Early Flowers 

 By Hattie L. Kxight 



Several 3-ears ago I found myself too much of an invalid to be out in 

 the garden sowing seeds, and with no one at my service who, in my opinion, 

 could be trusted to do it for me. A summer without flowers w^as too dreary 

 a prospect to be contemplated. This was long before I had learned the 

 value of hardy perennials, and depended almost wholly upon annuals for 

 flowers. Necessity thus set me to inventing, and I had my garden of 

 flowers after all. 



I secured a half-dozen wooden boxes about the size of common soap- 

 boxes and had them sawed so that they were each four inches deep. These 

 boxes were so small that when filled with soil they could be easily lifted 

 about. I had the boxes filled with soil from the garden ; and now imagine 

 my comfort as I sat at a table sowing my seeds ! There were no cramped 

 limbs and aching back, as was usually the case when I had sowed my 

 seeds in the seed-bed. 



I find by consulting my "notes" of that year that I sowed the seeds 

 April 9th. They came up quickly and far more satisfactorily than seeds 

 sown in the garden. But to say that this first attempt to grow seedlings of 

 annuals in the house was a perfect success would not be exact truth. Never- 

 theless, I had that year as fine a display of annuals as I ever had when the 

 seeds were sown in the garden, in spite of the fact that the weather did not 

 get warm enough for it to be prudent for an invalid to sit on the ground to 

 transplant them until between June 9th and June i6th. Although this 

 late transplanting was exceedingly harmful to their growth, they began to 

 come into bloom the first of July. 



I was so well satisfied with the experiment that I have repeated it every 

 year since. The method has merits sufficient to recommend it to any one 

 who does not have a hotbed to grow seedlings in. It is so late when seeds 

 can be sown in the garden up here in Alaine that by the time annuals grown 

 in this way come into full bloom they are killed by frosts. 



Instead of giving the details of my first experiment, I will give my 

 method of later years, which will be of more value from having been 

 perfected through past mistakes. I have studied to avoid all unnecessary 

 work, and a plant-table lined with zinc has proved a great saving of labour^ 



