Iputt^r intoning* 
PRACTICAL HINTS. 
I mention a few facts that I have learned in regard 
to blooming flowers, without a single one of the many 
appliances the professional gardener or wealthy amateur 
can command. 
With only a piazza for my flower garden I have, at 
different times, had nearly two hundred plants in 
bloom. The Japan Lilies, Lancifolium album, roseum 
and rubrum bloomed finely in boxes for two seasons. 
By shading as soon as the buds were ready to open, 
the plants remained in beauty for some time ; and one 
season, during a week of splendid moonlight nights, 
the humming-birds often came in and regaled them¬ 
selves from my lovely Lilies. I also had Auratum and 
Longiflorum, but although very beautiful, then- per¬ 
fume was almost too overpowering for a piazza. 
The Bouquet Dahlias 
and do best if mulched. 
I have tried Gladiolus 
them; they are much 
finer planted out of 
doors. 
Of Asters for such a 
garden as mine, I pre¬ 
fer the little Bouquet 
Aster; it keeps in 
bloom a long time, and 
the high winds are not 
so apt to injure it as is 
the case with the taller 
kinds. Another season 
I hope to try some of 
the new Dwarf Asters 
advertised by Briggs 
& Bros., and although 
quite out of the way of 
floral exhibitions of 
any kind, there is in 
our little community 
not a little rivalry in 
regard to the finest 
kinds of favorite 
flowers. 
I would not advise 
any one to try the new 
Japan Cockscomb. It 
may do well in a gar¬ 
den, but does not repay 
bloom quite freely in tubs, 
but never felt satisfied with 
flowers, they are far finer than the variegated, I t hin k. 
The pure white, uncolored, and dark crimson are the 
handsomest. Once I had some fine yellow Balsams, 
but the next year the seed saved did not come true. 
The Tradescantia and Maurandia vines will grow 
very nicely in tin cans. 
A home-made stand has looked very prettily all 
summer with plants grown entirely in tin cans. The 
stand has a little wire work on the edge, and the cans 
painted stone color with several holes in each, are 
placed within. Vines of Maurandia, Ivy, Oxalis, Tra¬ 
descantia, Ice Plant, Moneywort, intertwine and fall 
over the wire edge. In the middle, White Begonias, 
Iresine Gillsoni, Perns and Geraniums grow and 
mingle very pleasantly. 
Another use to which I put these cans, is to convert 
them into forcing arrangements. I take a starch box 
and put as many cans in as I wish to use, then fill all 
around the cans with sand. Twice a day I put boiling 
water into the cans, and place my pots with seeds or 
cuttings, or whatever I wish to start in the can, taking 
care not to let the water touch the bottom of the pot. 
By packing the sand well and slightly moistening it, 
will hold up quite a large jar. I always save all the 
cans that come in my way ; they are useful for many 
puiposes. Once I made a nice little tobacco fumigator 
for my plants. I took the bottom and top from a 
three-pound can, aud slit the sides a little way up and 
turned them up, tacked this on a light lid of board, 
first cutting four round holes in the side of the can near 
the bottom edge with an old gun-wad cutter; then I 
made several holes in the bottom of the two-pound can 
with a nail, inserted the bottom of the two-pound can 
into the top of the three-pound, and my little fumi¬ 
gator was ready. By placing a few bits of burning 
coal in the two-pound can and then a little tobacco, 
the plants were kept free of insects. I used it in a close 
room in which the plants were wintered. I generally 
put it in the room in the afternoon and allowed it to 
remain during the night. Fresh air was let in daily. 
I saw'- in a back number of the Cabinet that 
“ Achimenes” needed a greenhouse. I will give my 
experience with a few I have bloomed this season, re¬ 
marking, at the same time, that I have seen some 
bloomed just as well by the friend who gave me them, 
with far less care than I bestowed on mine. Perhaps 
it will be as well to 
mention that I reside 
in South Carolina. 
Very often plants re¬ 
quire a very different 
mode of treatment in 
different latitudes, and 
if those who write on 
this subject would al¬ 
ways state plainly their 
locality, a great deal of 
disappointment would 
be spared. In May a 
friend sent me some 
little dried up looking 
things with the single 
word “Achimenes” 
written on the paper 
envelope inclosing 
them. I looked at 
them and thought 
“ them poor miserable 
1 ookin g little scaly 
tubers, certainly none 
An English Villa Garden. 
will grow; neither do 
I know what treat¬ 
ment they require.” 
But, fortunately, I 
have the volumes of 
the cans can be easily removed and emptied and filled The Horticulturist, published by the lamented Down- 
again. ing, and in one I found a piece on “Achimenes.” 
It takes but a few moments each day to do this. If “ Very beautiful, and to be started in heat.” Oh, dear! 
you have a kerosene stove, which is now a necessity here was trouble, but I had no idea of giving up any- 
with us, and have one of the light tin kettles belong- thing beautiful in the way of flowers. I planted them 
piazza. Petunias, Verbenas, Maurandia and Tro- ing to it, while you are washing up your breakfast in three-inch pots, using good rich soil, put the pots 
in my hot water arrangement. In a few days I saw 
some little green sprouts coming up. I w ? as surprised. 
Prom this time they grew rapidly. 
They grew so rapidly that I found the pots were too 
small and shifted to six-inch. Soon they commenced 
blooming, and are only now (October) on the decline. 
The colors were very rich; royal purple, lilac, dark 
maroon, white with pretty feathery markings 
the trouble of planting as a piazza, plant. Neither did 
I succeed with the much praised Fountain plant. But 
the Abutilous will bloom and look very finely in such 
a place. 
My plants are on the east and south sides of the 
pseolum vines do best in large boxes on a southern 
shelf. I never could get the pretty little Canary Bird 
flower (Tropseolum Perigrinum) to bloom until I 
planted it in a southern exposure. Geraniums and 
Heliotropes do best to the east; all plants that are in 
pots do best if the pots are placed in long boxes of 
sand, and this may be covered with moss. 
I have found that Balsams bloom very satisfactorily 
in tin cans (the three-pound cans in which tomatoes 
are put up), in fact, the blooms were finer this season 
in the cans than those planted in boxes of a foot 
square, or those in seven-inch jars. 
I kept them to a single stem; they were the 
“ Smith’s Prize.” Some of the plants gave me 
three successive blooms. I prefer the self-colored 
things the second supply of water can lie heating. As 
soon as you finish, if the kettle is boiling, go out and 
refresh yourself by filling your tin cans, then refresh 
your green children with the warm soap suds you liave 
washed your cups, etc. with. 
In the afternoon fill again, and if any plants are dry, 
give them some more warm, not hot, water. Late in 
the evening give all a liberal shower-bath of clear 
water; the plants will repay you at early morn with purple, etc. My experience is that they need shade 
bright fresh foliage, and smiling flowers will greet you. i after they begin to bloom, and much water. 
In using these cans to force plants (“ bottom heat,” the' I forgot to shade them on one or two occasions, and 
gardeners call it), it is best to use the two-pound can feared I had lost them, but I watered freely and set the 
for three or four-inch pots and the three-pound for jars in deep plates of water, and removed from the 
larger. By carefully hammering the edge down when piazza to a cool shaded room. In less than an hour, 
you open the can, you will form a strong rim which I every flower was fresh and bright. M. M. M. 
