32 The Fern Garden. 



The majority of amateur fern growers allow their pot 

 plants to go dry as dust all winter, and the consequence 

 is that they grow very poorly in the early part of the 

 following season ; in fact, scarcely grow at all till June, 

 by which time their new fronds ought to be all com- 

 pleted. It is a grand secret of success to keep their 

 crowns freely moistened all the winter long. 



The next best time to shift them will be the 1st of 

 March. Proceed as before, using pots one size larger. 

 You will now have fine specimens. The frame will no 

 longer hold them. You must either build a green- 

 house to keep them in, or you must have a pit of suffi- 

 cient depth to give them head room, or you must make 

 a rockery and plant them all out in it, or you must 

 divide them all by splitting them asunder with a knife 

 right through the crown, and pot all the pieces, or you 

 must sell them and retire on the proceeds. It cannot 

 be my business what becomes of them after this date ; it 

 suffices that I have made a fern grower of you, and you 

 will be enabled to understand and practise all the direc- 

 tions and suggestions on fern growing which you may 

 find in this volume or any other that may be worth 

 referring to. You will have learnt that a clean, granular, 

 peaty, fibrous soil ; a rather still, warm, and moist at- 

 mosphere, and shade from sunshine, are the principal 

 essentials to success in fern growing, and to make short 

 of this part of the paper, I may as well say that you 

 have very little more to learn in the way of principles ; 

 if you are ever to excel in fern growing, it will be owing 

 to the use you make of observation and experience in 

 carrying those principles into effect. 



