The Canadian Horticulturist. 341 



THE WINDOW GARDEN. 



If you have a bay window rip up the carpet or oil cloth and have the flout 

 covered with galvanized iron or zinc with a rim an inch high all round ; then 

 you can give your flowers a semi-weekly shower bath without much trouble. If 

 you have no bay window, a wash-tub will answer ; set the plants into it and give 

 them a good showering with the sprinkler with water that does not feel cold to 

 the hand. This washes off the dust, and if enough tobacco tea is added to give 

 the water a plain odor of tobacco it will keep down the aphis or green fly. These 

 shower baths should be given weekly. 



The air is, in most cases, far too dry for plants or people. 'I'his can be 

 easily remembered by keeping a dish of some sort filled with w^ter upon a hot 

 part of the stove where it will almost boil. Stoves differ, but you can have 

 a dish fitted to yours by the tinsmiths, and by all means don't fail to have it, 

 especially if you have roses. Speaking of roses reminds one of two of three 

 reasons why most people fail with roses in the house. In the first place they fail 

 to keep the air moist and thus give a standing invitation to that deadly enegiy, 

 the red spider. Next, the temperature of most living rooms in winter is kept 

 about 80°, which is 10° too high for the people, and 15° to 20° too high for the 

 plants, another invitation to the red spider. 



Don't keep your rooms so hot, and if your plants must, from the size or 

 shape of your room, stand very near the stove, make a light frame of wood with 

 legs that will hold it up edgewise and cover it with some neat pattern of wall 

 paper, putting a border around the edge. This will make a light, neat fire 

 screen which will keep your plants from cooking, and, if well made, be an 

 ornament besides. 



If you can give your roses a window in some room that has no stove in it, 

 yet which does not freeze, they will do far better, and an occasional .slight frost 

 will do them far less injury than continual dry heat. If you are forced to keep 

 your plants where they are likely to freeze, keep dishes of water among the pots. 

 These will help to moisten the air and lessen the chance of freezing, and do not 

 forget that the nearer the floor your plants are the more likely they are to freeze. 



This is a good time to carefully note all plants as need repotting, and do it 

 now, while the plants can be left outside for a few days after the operation, to 

 recover, and while soil for the purpose is readily obtained. It would not be a bad 

 idea, if you have many plants, to stow a barrel of well prepared soil in the cellar 

 where it will be handy for early spring seed pans or for any repotting during the 

 winter. 



There is a little knack about repotting plants. If you wish to shift to a pot 

 of larger size, especially if is a plant that does not take kindly to disturbance at 

 the roots, fills the new pot with soil far enough up to make the difference in 

 depth between it and the old one, allowing for any drainage material there may 



