256 MORE POT-POURRI 



Early sowing of early summer annuals is most essential 

 here. I see Miss Jekyll holds much to autumn sowing. I 

 have tried it and failed in some cases, but that is because 

 I have done it too late in the autumn. Early sowing is 

 the only plan of spring sowing that is at all successful 

 here. This particular first week in March 1899 is per- 

 fection for all gardening work. I never saw the ground 

 in such a good state pulverised by night frosts, without 

 being too dry and dusty. The gardening papers say there 

 has not been such a sunny February for thirty years. 



The paper of instructions sent out by the secretary of 

 the Eoyal Horticultural Society with the seed of the 

 Shirley Poppy 19 so excellent and such a help for many 

 annuals that I cannot do better than copy it. One of 

 the reasons people fail with hardy annuals is, as I said 

 before, from not sowing them early enough : 



' 1. On as early a day as possible in February choose 

 a plot of ground sixteen to eighteen feet square or there- 

 abouts, give it a liberal dressing of rich dung and dig it 

 in well, and leave it to settle. 



' 2. For sowing, choose the first fine open day in March, 

 free from actual frost, when the ground works easily, and 

 rake the surface over. 



' 3. Mix the seed with five or six times its own bulk of 

 dry sand, so as to make it easier to sow it thinly. 



' 4. Scatter the mixture thinly, broadcast, over the 

 raked surface and rake it again lightly. 



' 5. When the seedlings are large enough to handle, if 

 there should be any bare patches in the bed, move with 

 the tip of a trowel a few tiny clumps from where they 

 stand thickest. 



' 6. As soon as the bed shows regularly green, stretch 

 two lines across it parallel to each other, at eight inches 

 apart and, with a Dutch hoe, hoe up all between the lines, 

 sparing those plants only that are close to each line. 



