April 10.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
21 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
Companion to the Calendar. —Some of the more 
pressing operations for this month I touched on last 
week, and now that my idea of a Companion is out, I 
shall begin alphabetically, and go regularly through the 
Calendar. 
Annuals (tender) are the first on the list, and the 
tender sorts for the flower-garden are chiefly half-hardy ; 
such as the different Lobelias, Mesembryanthemums, Phlox 
Drummondii, Portulaceas, Salpiglossis, and others of that 
stamp, and all of these that were sown in February and 
March ought now to be fit for pricking out into other pots 
to be still kept in a warm bed till they take a good hold 
of the fresh soil, when they will he fit to be removed to 
a cool place to harden them off in time to be ready to 
transplant into the borders or beds. Pricking out is the 
florist’s name for a change from the seed-pot to the 
nursing-pot. No matter how many or how few seedling 
plants of any kind we may have to prick out, the most 
economical way is to put four, five, or six of them into a 
•3-incli pot, to save room, which is always more scarce 
in April than at any other time. Four seedlings is 
the right number; hut to make sure I say five or six, 
and, if they all live, four of the best of them will be 
ready for a pot each at the beginning of May. At 
that time, by quartering the ball, each little plant has 
a sufficient quantity of soil to carry it on for the next 
stage. Every one of us knows by this time that I make 
strong objections to balls at planting out time, and in 
this way of pricking out and quartering we lay a foundation 
against the ball system. The best gardeners and nurse- 
rymen adopt the plan with their more delicate stock, 
such as Heaths, from cuttings or seeds, which take two 
or three seasons before they are fit for sale ; while such 
things as Verbenas, which come to a marketable size hi 
a few weeks, are potted singly from the beginning; not 
that single potting is the best system, but because, 
for them, it is the most convenient. So that, in learning 
things from the practice of the best growers, we may he 
led into mistakes, and I hold it to be bad practice to put 
flower-garden plants from the cutting or seed-pot into 
single pots at all, and I should consider it a fortunate 
circumstance if every kind reared from cuttings since , 
last July could be had, four in a pot at planting out 
time, when, by quartering the ball, the plants would 
have enough of soil about their roots, and there would 
he no need of shaking part of a ball oft', to loosen the roots 
so as to enable them to take to the soil in the bed at once. 
That is the philosophy of pricking out and quartering. 
At the next stage, that is, when the little seedlings require 
more room, I would not pot one of them if I could help 
it. I would rather plant them in temporary beds, made 
of a few inches deep of light compost, in imitation of 
planting in the open beds; only that I would plant 
them as thickly as the quarter ball would allow. In 
three weeks the roots would so spread about that one 
might get a good deal more soil attached to them than 
would be equivalent to a ball from a 3-inch pot. 
At the proper time for planting, finally, in the flower- 
garden, I would take a barrow, or a basket, or a sieve, I 
as the case might require, and with a trowel would lift 
them plant after plant, allowiug as much soil to follow | 
the roots as they would carry, and in that excellent ' 
condition they could not fail to do well. Eesides the 
pleasure of knowing that one was in the best path, there j 
is a great economy of time, pots, and room in this sys- j 
tern — three things that are always scarce about all 
gardens by the end of April. When an exception to j 
the rule occurs, the next best plan is to put two seedlings, 
or two rooted cuttings, into one small pot directly oppo¬ 
site each other, so to remain till the time of planting out 
finally in the beds or borders, and then either to make 
two halves of the ball, putting in each plant separately, 
or merely splitting down the ball nearly to the bottom, 
and planting the two occupants together, and then 
training them down to the soil right and left. By this 
splitting you get some loose soil in between the parts, 
into which the roots will work much sooner then they 
will do from the outside of the ball parts. Planting- 
whole balls, under any circumstances, is the very worst 
practice in gardening. I have seen so much mischief 
resulting from it that it makes me shudder even to think 
about it, and to enforce my objection I shall repeat 
what, I think, I once told in these pages. A few years 
since I went, late in the evening, with one of the 
best London growers to look at a long border of choice 
novelties, planted with halls some weeks previously. 
The border had been well watered with a rose pot an 
hour or two before, and had I not been interested to 
mark some plants, which I wished to purchase, the 
whole might be passed as in a flourishing condition; 
but the first which I examined did not come up to my 
idea of a bedder at all, and I was told it was “ a miffy 
dog;” and well it might. The border was fresh dug at 
the time of planting, all the plants were put in with the 
balls entire, and by the time of the visit, what with the 
watering and the settling of the soil, the top of most of 
the balls were above the general surface of the border; 
the sun and air baked the exposed surface of the balls, 
so that the water could not enter them, and there they 
were, as dry as Scotch snuff, the plants half dying in the 
midst of plenty; and I am afraid the poor fellow who 
planted this border ran a hard chance of going without 
his dinner next week. But our chance visit saved half 
of the plants from actual destruction; at any rate, the 
master said he would have every one of them taken up 
next morning, the dry stuff shaken away from the roots, 
and then replanted in the same places, and well watered. 
Box-edgings come next in the Calendar. I never 
could make out how it is that in England nine persons 
out of ten plant box-edgings with rooted plants, while in 
Scotland not one in a hundred ever thinks of such a 
thing. There they prefer slips without roots. At Beau¬ 
fort Castle, beyond Inverness, where I first learned to 
plant box-edgings, I have seen miles of it put in without 
a single root, and not a sprig failed. I have there sat 
for weeks together cutting off the tops of strong-rooted 
dwarf box, with a chopper on a block, and then trimmed 
it for planting; and that was the regular practice all 
round that part of the country, and is so yet for aught 
I know. It was the same in Morayshire, and round by 
Aberdeen to Perth and Edinburgh, and in some nurse¬ 
ries I have seen them cutting down box-edgings close to 
the ground to get slips for propagation, and letting the 
roots throw up a fresh crop to be dealt with after the 
same manner in three years afterwards. In several 
parts of England I have planted it just in the same way, 
and with the same result; and I firmly believe there is not 
the least advantage in planting dwarf box with roots to 
it. I have seen it thus planted every month in the year 
with almost equal success; hut, I believe, October is the 
best month to plant it; but roots or no roots, it may be 
planted now and up to the middle of May. 
Biennials come next, but out of the a b c order. 
From the middle to the end of April; again in July, 
and also in February, we sow biennials, according to the 
kinds and the season we want them to flower; but I 
cannot spare room to say more of them just now. 
Bulbs done flowering in glasses, &c., I shall leave for 
Mr. Fish. 
Carnations, Cloves, and Pinks. —I was never a 
florist, and I'fear never shall be one, but these plants 
are so very useful for cut flowers, and every one likes 
them that way, that we grow them extensively in the 
reserve garden, but never in the flower garden, where 
the best of them are no better than the Nemoplulas, as 
far as a long season of bloom is concerned. Yet, where 
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