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. 
