MIGNONETTE AND EOSES 



I AVE you been unsuccessful iu growing mignonette? I am 

 afraid many Amateurs and even professionals will- admit 

 they liave. Will you please try once more, my n-aij^ If 

 you do I promise you success. When I think of mignonette, I 

 always think of our old Holland gardener, a dear soul who had 

 worked for half a century and more among plants and flowers, and 

 I recall how he always said that a laundry flat-iron was as neces- 

 sary for correctly growing mignonette as good, fertile seed, and 

 if 3'ou asked him why he would, in his slow, deliberate way, tell 

 you that he had found mignonette seed never A\ ould germinate in 

 a loose soil and this explained his dependence and devotion to 

 the weightiest of flat-irons. When the seed flats were made ready 

 in the usual way, that is with the provision for the necessary 

 drainage, and filled with good soil (that was well-limed) and the 

 soil reached to the very top of the flats and "running over," it 

 was beaten down hard with his trusty flat-iron, the point of the 

 iron packing down the soil in the corners and on the sides until 

 it was all a fine, hard level, then the seeds were sown very thinly 

 by thoroughly mixing together the seed an3 sharp sand in the 

 proportions of ten parts of sand to one of seed or, in other words 

 let us sayj an ounce of the seed with ten ounces of sharp sand all 

 thoroughly mixed together of course. 



Then sand only, and not soil, was lightly used for covering 

 \]ie seed and as the flats had been watered and allowed to drain 

 before sowing, there was nothing further to be done but to wait 

 for their germination which was astonishingly quick. 



The seedlings should be transplanted singly when they are 

 very small — mere babies. By putting them into three-inch pots, 

 and carefully dn sting over the surface powdered charcoal, then 

 firm the soil about them, and when they are large enough and 

 have been "hardened-off" they can then be planted out in the gar- 

 den- But before planting out of doors the soil about them should 

 be watered before removing them from the pots. This will insure 

 the soil remaining intact about the roots, and it should be remem- 



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