52 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
These were carefully transplanted, and each seedling was 
covered with a Neponset pot for three or four days. To trans- 
plant I use a mason’s small pointing trowel, and by thrusting 
in the trowel three or four inches and drawing it forward, it 
makes a deep clean hole, or rather, a wide slit in the ground 
into which you can drop the roots of the plant to their full 
depth. If water is poured in at once before pushing back the 
earth, the ground is wet down to the very tip of the roots, 
which is not the case if the earth is put back first and watered 
afterwards. I believe that this method of soaking the earth 
at the very roots has been the reason why I seldom lose a plant 
when transplanted. Even young poppies survive when thus 
treated. Before lifting the seedlings it is well to water them 
thoroughly in order that as much earth as possible may cling 
to the roots. If the plants are too thick in the rows, you lose 
most of the soil when separating them; therefore sow seed 
sparingly in the row, and have more rows, if necessary. Leave 
a slight depression about each plant for the water to settle in, 
as was suggested for the seed rows. 
There is this to be said, however, about transplanted seed- 
lings: they require much more care for a time than if allowed 
to remain where the seed was sown; they must have daily 
watering; and, if scattered promiscuously over a garden, it 
means much labor; they must be shaded from the hot sun for 
a week or more, and they are never so large or vigorous, un- 
less every condition is favorable. I have since found a much 
better way to treat annuals than to start them in either a hot- 
bed or a cold frame. I now have beds devoted to them, on 
either side of the entrance to the garden, one three feet by 
seventeen, the other three feet by fourteen. These beds are 
part of a terrace that is two feet lower than the lawn about the 
house, and face the southwest. As soon as the earth is mellow, 
perhaps by the last week of April, I plant the seeds in the open 
