114 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
Mat 18. 
RULES FOR BEDDING-OUT. 
To do a thing in a bold, dashing style, whether it be 
in war, or in politics, or in planting flower-beds, may, or 
may not, be the best policy, according to the circum¬ 
stances under which such things are effected. And 
what are the circumstances, at the present moment, 
under which the best flower-gardens in the country are 
being planted? They are, indeed, most favourable; never 
more so in ray time; an almost cloudless sky for the 
: three previous months, to harden, to ripen, and to bring 
forward abundance of seeds and seedlings, old plants 
and young ones ; to dry, to pulverise, and warm the soil, 
far beyond the average, for the reception of the healthy 
stock, and sufficient cold and easterly winds to make 
people careful of how, and how soon, they exposed their 
half-hardy things; but those who lost bedding-plants by 
the sudden change of weather, and the unusual severity 
of the frost on the 24th April, must belong to the dashing 
| class, notwithstanding all these favourable turns. After 
bringing forward all our best plants under the most 
favourable circumstances, such as no one remembers 
ever to have seen before, a large per centage of our new 
beginners have so managed their planting, for the last 
few days, or have made up their minds for this manage¬ 
ment, as will teach them a lesson, to their own cost, for 
the rest of their lives. 
In the first place, these new comers expect their beds 
to be full and flourishing all at once; the least hin¬ 
drance, or the smallest check to their enthusiasm, 
makes them as fidgety as old gardeners; yet, after all 
their pains and troubles, they will most certainly be weeks 
behind, just owing to the style or manner of their 
planting; many of their best plants will go dead before 
their eyes, inch by inch, and leaf after leaf. Petunias 
and Verbenas will die suddenly, no one knows why, but 
the why is all in the planting. All the tribes of Gera¬ 
niums begin by shrivelling up the lower leaves, and 
end in baked stems, brown foliage, and puny trusses 
of starvation-looking flowers, which no one can account 
for, and none can mend, but St. Swithin. 
All through this style of planting, and so on all over 
the garden, hardly a tribe escapes the over doing of a 
good thing, indeed, those plants which had the least 
trouble taken with them, and had to be huddled out of 
store pots at the last to make up slight deficiencies, do 
so much better than the bulk of the stock, that one is 
apt to be set against so much garden teachings altogether, 
and trust to chance for the future. Now this often 
comes of many things as well as of gardening ; bold 
spirits despise small things; but in gardening, at any 
rate, when you once refuse to comply with the very 
simplest rule, you are on floating ice" and it is your 
own fault if Charley mistakes you for a Russian. 
The very simplest rule that I know of in all gardening 
is this, and it is the rule which is set at nought by 
your fast-men: no plant whatever, from Wellinytonia 
yig'antea, to Pyjtnccm minimus, should he planted out of a 
pot, anywhere, with the whole hall of earth left entire 
about the roots; and if there is one secret in gardening, 
more than another, it hinges on that simple rule. Every 
writer on gardening of any note, has set his face against 
the evil practice of planting entire balls with any plant; 
every reader of this work has read the same tale ten times 
over, and yet, go where you will for the next month, and 
you will see evidences of the practice being still in full 
force, save in the hands of scientific gardeners. It is 
that practice which kills so many bedding-plants out¬ 
right, which keeps so many of them in doubt whether 
they will live or die, and so hinder them from spreading 
out, and from filling up the beds in half the time; and 
what makes it worse is the fact, that all amateurs, or, at 
least, all young amateurs, without exception, give six 
times more pot room to their bedding-plants than gar¬ 
deners in first-rate places. There are millions of bed¬ 
ding-plants planted out every year that were never in a 
pot at all. I myself, as I have often told, used to keep 
five thousand of Punch Geranium in one pit, from the 
cutting state till they were removed to the flower-garden, 
without a single pot; and there is hardly a Geranium 
that is used for beds but I have had in scores, without 
pots, ready for the beds; and so with other bedders 1 
throughout the catalogue, and every other gardener of ; 
extensive practice, all over the country, does the like every 
season. Let us all, therefore, turn over a new leaf this 
season, and not commit a single plant to the beds from a 
pot without first loosening the ball considerably. Where 
the roots are matted round the ball, it is better to shake 
off every particle of the old soil than to plant the ball 
entire; but this is an extreme case; and but few balls are 
so hard matted as to need total separation. If the bot¬ 
tom and the top of the ball, in ordinary cases, are well 
loosened, and a squeeze is then given to the sides be¬ 
tween the fingers, so as to release the end of the outside 
roots as much as possible, it will be sufficient. 
The next point of importance is to see that all the 
pots or balls have been well watered the evening or 
morning before turning, out ; but of all the modes that 
have yet been hit upon for the safe transplanting of 
bedding-plants, none is so good as that of having two 
plants in every pot, then, if the pot was well watered a 
few hours before the planting, it will not be difficult to '• 
make two equal parts of the ball, not by cutting, but by 
a gentle pull, so as not to tear the roots, and if a trowel 
is used for planting, the back of the half ball will press 
and fit against the mark of the trowel as it would 
the side of the pot it was just turned out of, while the 
torn side, so to speak, is open to a handful of loose soil 
to be pressed gently against the face of the roots, and 
when the bed is watered after it is planted, the soil 
mixes with one-half of the roots all over it, as much 
and as effectually as if the plants were only divided and 
put into separate pots, and the plants will start away at 
once; other things being equally favourable, as warmth, 
moisture, and not much cold, drying winds. Three 
plants in a pot, say of young Verbenas, or the like, are 
better and easier managed than one plant having a firm 
ball, as if there is enough of that kind, the strongest 
plant of the three may be carefully separated from the 
rest with a portion of the soil, and the other two may be 
left in the other portion, but to be laid right and left, as 
the planting goes on. When a ball is dry at the time 
of planting, or when it is as hard as a cannon ball, by 
the pressure of the l'oots, from a long standing in one 
pot, the effect produced is this, and any one can prove 
it in one moment; the next watering after it is planted 
has no more power on it than so much water thrown on 
the back of a duck; there is no cup like the top of a 
pot to hold the water till it finds its way down slowly 
among the roots, nor is there anything like the sides 
of the pot to hinder the water from naming sideways 
into the loose soil. A plant with a few good leaves, as 
a Tom Thumb, planted with a hard ball to it, would 
stand a whole rainy day without the rain makiug the 
least impression on the dryness of the ball. I have seen 
it so repeatedly, and if this hard ball was moist enough 
at the time of planting, it would only add two or three 
more days to the comfort of the roots, as, let a hard ball 
be once placed in loose earth, there is no more chance ! 
for it to receive more wet, and it is too near the surface 
to make much of any moisture which it might suck 
from below. 
After planting according to rules which have been 
sanctioned by long practice, the next step is to tie or 
stake, and to guard some thiugs from strong sun and 
from cold winds. A bed which is more than five feet 
wide must be trodden upon when you come to train or 
stake any of the plants, and this treading of the soil is 
