194 How to Make a Flower Garden 



III. Advice of a Market Gardener 

 By Patrick O'Mara 



A NECESSARY adjunct to the flower and vegetable garden is a coldframe. 

 In it the early plantings of cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce (raised from 

 seed sown in the fall) are kept over during the winter. Hardy annuals and 

 biennials, such as pansies, daisies, violets, chrysanthemums, auriculas, 

 cowslips, forget-me-nots, hollyhocks, carnations, etc., are best grown from 

 seed sown in August or early September, tran'::planted into a coldframe, and 

 again transplanted in spring to a permanent situation. 



A coldframe is easy of construction, being simply a box of the desired 

 length on the surface of the ground, and covered with sashes when cold 

 weather sets in. If possible, the frames should be constructed so as to run 

 northeast to southwest, or east to west if the former is not feasible. Calling 

 the side facing northwest or north the back of the frame, the board forming 

 the back should be ten or twelve inches high — the width of a hemlock board ; 

 the front boards should be six or eight inches high. This will give a slope 

 toward the sun, the better to catch its rays, and will also quickly shed rain. 

 The frame is made by putting posts in the ground and nailing the boards 

 to them, one at the center of each board and one at each end. The posts are 

 generally made from hemlock joists two inches by three inches, and should be 

 sunk about two feet in the ground, first giving them a good coat of tar. 

 Where the boards join, each can be nailed to one post, the wide surface of 

 the posts being faced to the boards, the posts to be on the outside of the 

 frames. The standard length of the sashes is six feet, so that the boards 

 should be five feet eight inches apart, thus allowing the sashes to project two 

 inches over the boards, an inch at each end, for convenience in giving 

 ventilation and in taking them off and putting them on. 



Various devices are used to so fasten the sashes as to prevent them 

 from being blown away by heavy winds. The simplest is to prepare small 

 wooden wedges about six inches long, which are driven in between the sashes 

 and so bind the whole frame securely. A safe way is to put a screw-eye 

 in the end of each sash and a hook in the board and fasten each sash in that 

 manner. These fastenings should be used on the north side of the frame, if 

 the prevailing winter winds come from that quarter. Another method is to 



