8 
THE CULTURE OF THE BALSAM. 
Sir, —If you can afford space in your valuable journal for the 
following remarks on that indispensable flower the 'Balsam, 
(Impatiens balsamina,) you will oblige me, and it may benefit 
some of your readers. I have been requested by several friends 
to give them my method of cultivation, and will now refer them 
to the Florist’s Journal, for every one must acknowledge that 
printed directions are better than verbal. 
To grow balsams to the perfection they are capable of attain¬ 
ing it is necessary to sow early, say the last week in February; 
and here a matter of some moment arises in the choice of seed: 
to obtain good double flowers the seed should be saved only 
from such plants as produce the very best flowers ; if taken 
indiscriminately from all that produce seed, the chances are 
that more than one half the produce is good for nothing ; in 
fact, it is better to throw away every plant that does not bring 
fine double flowers as soon as it can be ascertained. Such 
selected seed should be at least two years old before it is sown, 
as new seed mostly makes weak straggling plants and inferior 
flowers ; without attention to this the trouble of growing the 
plants is comparatively lost. The seed should be sown on a 
gentle hotbed, such as is usually made up for tender annuals, 
either in pans or upon the surface of the bed about the time 
before mentioned ; and as soon as they have grown about an inch 
and a half in height, prick them into small pots, and continue 
them in the same frame until fit for repotting, which is usually 
in a fortnight Any light soil, such as rotten leaf-mould, is fit 
for the first and second shifting, but at each successive shift the 
strength of it should be increased by the addition of rich loam 
and rotten dung, till at the last they are placed in a compost of 
two thirds loam and one third old hotbed manure. The sizes -of 
the pots should be successively 60s, 48s, 24s, and 16s, or larger 
if requisite ; by the time they are placed in 24s they will require 
a pit to grow in, as they are then too large for a frame, but should 
