THE TIOLET. 83 



planted from the field to the house has much to do with 

 inviting the development of the violet disease, it is by 

 many thought best to set the young plants at once in 

 the greenhouse beds where they are to flower, and thus 

 avoid the check that is likely to be incurred when they 

 are grown in the field and then transplanted. 



SOIL AND PLANTING OUT. 



While violets will give good results upon almost any 

 good soil, they will succeed best upon one that is moist, 

 but well drained, and while heavy is not so stiff as to 

 bake or crack. If the soil is naturally rich, the use of 

 from five to ten pounds of ground bone to the square 

 rod will give stronger and healthier plants than if they 

 are grown with stable manure. 



The plants, when grown out of doors during the 

 summer, should be set about nine or ten inches apart 

 in the rows, which should be at intervals of twelve or 

 fifteen inches, unless large numbers are grown, when 

 they are better if placed thirty inches, so that they can 

 be worked with the horse. The care required by them 

 is simple, but they should not be neglected. The run- 

 ners that start should be cut off, to cause the plants to 

 thicken up, and if the summer is a dry one they should 

 be mulched and, as a last resort, watered, a treatment 

 that should sufiBce to keep down the red spider, which 

 might otherwise trouble them; at any rate, frequent 

 shallow cultivation should not be neglected. 



As fall approaches, the plants should be taken up 

 and placed either in a cold frame or upon beds in the 

 greenhouse. While some growers use six- or seven-inch 

 pots, nearly all violet growers place them in beds, in 

 which the soil is from five to eight inches deep, and 

 composed of four parts of rotted sods to one part of cow 

 manure. The beds, whether shallow or solid, should be 

 raised above the level of the floor, so as to bring the 



