WHAT TO PLANT 
31 
soaked or watered with the solution are made more vigorous 
and healthy. 
A veteran gardener makes the statement that, '“if gar¬ 
den seeds, when planted in the spring, are firmly pressed 
when under the earth by the hall of the foot, at the time 
the gardeners are putting them into the ground, they will 
invariably grow, drought or no drought; and, what is still 
more important, they will spring up earlier and grow faster 
than any of their kind which have not been subjected to 
this discipline.” 
After the seeds have sprouted and the infant plants 
have attained to the dignity of four leaves, they will re¬ 
quire transplanting or thinning out, as plenty of room to 
grow in is necessary to a healthy condition and luxuriant 
blooming. A foot apart is none too much space for such 
plants as balsams, petunias, and asters. 
The transplanting should always be done in cloudy 
weather, or, better still, at night; as even fruit-trees in 
flower moved at night will come into bearing as if they 
had not been disturbed, while those transplanted during 
the day will drop their fruit unperfected. In transplant¬ 
ing, as much earth as possible should be retained around 
the roots, and the plant should be carefully shaded and 
watered afterward. 
• A few of the most desirable annuals for a small garden 
are : sweet-peas, mignonette, asters, balsams, petunias, can¬ 
dy-tuft, chrysanthemums, convolvulus, cypress-vine, lobelia, 
mignonette, nasturtiums, phlox Drummondii , salpiglossis, 
whitlavia, sweet alyssum. 
This, with other plants, is a sufficiently long list for a 
small garden ; but, if other varieties are desired, any flo¬ 
rist’s catalogue will furnish their names and habits. 
Among the perennials, which seem, like the annuals, 
to die at the approach of winter, but which still retain vig¬ 
orous life at the roots and spring up in renewed beauty 
