1894.] ESSAYS. 19 



earlier date than for flowers alone. But you and I want three months 

 of bloom, and the finest blossoms will come in Indian Summer days. 

 So I say, yes, rich soil is wanted to carry the vines through a long 

 season. But now it is just there where failure and success hinges. 

 Folks say to me, I followed your rules and my vines either went to 

 rank, bloomless weeds, or else they turned yellow and died before 

 they had any chance to bloom. 



Well, now, I should say to most folks: If you have a tolerably 

 good garden soil don't fuss with any extra manure until at least your 

 vines get up three feet, where they are ready to feed rapidly and will 

 digest strong food. It takes a wise mother's skill to feed a baby to 

 make it strong, and it takes a florist's skill to know how not to feed a 

 tender plant and how to feed it, so it will get the food when it needs 

 it. I many times start slips ignorantly in pots filled with too rich a 

 compost, and the baby slips have a precarious existence for weeks 

 because they can't bear such rich feeding. A little learning is a dan- 

 gerous thing in the flower business, and with this new revival in 

 Sweet Peas many people have rushed in to get big Eckfords, and 

 have put rank manure or rich compost into their soil, and starved and 

 rotted and burnt their vines by excess of feeding and overanxious 

 care. I have been burying cords of manure in my ground, but I keep 

 at least six inches of the poorest soil on top. I want it rich down 

 where the roots will feed, when they get large enough to feed. And 

 we have to plant our Sweet Peas deep to stand the Summer drought. 

 The vine doesn't feed above the root, and of what use is it to have the 

 upper soil full of rank matter? There is where the vine burns and 

 rots. The upper five or six inches of soil should be kept as cool as 

 possible, and a mulching above that shades it. But suppose in your 

 zeal for fine Sweet Peas you spade in manure clear up to the surface 

 of the ground, and the July sun is pouring down on that, and those 

 tender vines with their seeds down deep have got to come up through 

 that rank, heating manure, and because they seem to grow slowly you 

 water them, and then you wonder why they get slimy and rot and die 

 down. Every gardener knows that peas germinate at a low tempera- 

 ture, and love the cool end of Summer. It is a part of our problem 

 how to feed Sweet Peas and keep them cool in July. I stand before 

 my Sweet Peas and wonder how, when culinary peas mildew in mid- 

 summer, these beautiful vines can hold their green thrift, and be in 

 the very prime of abundant bloom. Now, it would be a study to tell 

 each man how to treat his particular soil so as to get these conditions 

 which I have suggested, — plenty of plant food, where and when 



