CHAPTER XII. 



CLUIBING VINES BALCONY GARDENING. 



What delicate taste and suggestive beauty seem gathered up in the associations 

 of climbing vines. 



Helps to Home Adornment we have often called them, and the fairy fingers 

 who twine them around their parlor windows, or along the piazza, or on the rus- 

 tic trellis before the cottage door, will tell you how well they appreciate their 

 value in making home so pleasant. Climbing vines afford us an opportunity of 

 clothing not the outside of the window alone, but its inside also, with verdure 

 and decorations of greenery, for our imagination must now include, as part of 

 the domain of house-gardening, the ornature of the outside of the window, 

 piazza, or balcony, as well as the interior. Ideas of refinement, taste and beauty, 

 are invariably suggested by the presence of climbing vines. Let the corners of 

 our houses, or the edges of our windows, be hid under the delicate foliage or 

 brilliant flowers, and their natural festoons of mingled verdure and bloom will 

 soften the most gloomy surroundings. 



Our new built houses, with all their architectural finish and imposing design, 

 still lack the last softening polish which comes only from the mellowing and 

 genial touch of the vine. The first thing to be considered in growing vines 

 indoors is the soil. Bulbous plants require light and very loose soil. Short, 

 fibrous roots need a firm, fine soil. Long and spreading roots need a heavier and 

 coarser soil than others. For most plants good garden loam, loosened, when 

 necessary, by mixing with it street sand or gravel, and enriched by the application 

 of a liquid stimulant answers very well. To make this stimulant, mix half a 

 peck of stable manure or street sweepings, with a quart of pulverized charcoal, 

 in a three-gallon vessel, and fill up the vessel with soft water. After it has 

 stood a week the vessel will be ready for use. It should be clear. Water your 

 plants with this three days consecutively, once in three weeks, during their ear- 

 liest growth and blooming. It should be perfectly odorless ; if not, then add 

 more charcoal. As the liquid becomes more exhausted add more water. This 

 quantity of fertilizing material will supply stimulant enough for two dozen large 

 plants during six months. 



If you can obtain leaf mould the fine, dark soil from the woods take this 

 for a third ingredient of your soil. It will prove, also, quite as nutritive as this 

 fertilizer. If fertilizing liquids are used, they must be applied directly to the 

 soil; but when water only is used, the whole plant should be showered with it, 

 if possible. 



