JANUARY 163 



Jamiary 6th. I always order all the kitchen-garden 

 seeds during January. My method is this the gardener 

 marks Button's list, and then brings it to me to alter 

 or add to it any out-of-the-way vegetable. It is most 

 important to go through the catalogues and order seeds 

 early in this month. This enables you to get first choice, 

 and you are then prepared for any kind of weather, and 

 can sow early if desirable. Also it is easy to make up 

 omissions later on while still not too late. For all the 

 flower-seeds that are the result of careful cultivation 

 such as Sweet-peas, Mignonette, Asters, Salpiglossis, and 

 so on the great nurserymen cannot, of course, be sur- 

 passed in excellence. But for small people who grow a 

 variety of flowers they are very expensive, as they only sell 

 large packets of seeds, have few things out of the common, 

 and hardly any interesting perennials at all. I said before 

 and continue to say that, for all uncommon seeds, there is 

 one man without any rival so far as I know, and that is 

 Mr. Thompson of Ipswich. His catalogue alone is most 

 descriptive and instructive. It is the only catalogue I know 

 arranged simply and alphabetically, with a column telling 

 whether the plants are hardy or half-hardy, tender or per- 

 ennial, greenhouse, stove, etc. It also is the only catalogue 

 which gives the approximate height that the plant ought 

 to reach when grown to perfection. But of course this 

 varies immensely, as he says himself, with the character 

 of the soil and situation in which they are cultivated, 

 especially if grown in pots. With this list and a careful 

 reference from the things named to the more detailed 

 accounts in the ' English Flower Garden ' or in John- 

 son's ' Gardener's Dictionary/ the requirements of all 

 the plants that are grown in English gardens can be 

 arrived at. The books will tell you better than the cata- 

 logue which are the things best worth growing from 

 seed. But a certain amount of experience and natural 



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