Retro Garden

BE sure to give your plants all the water they need at this season. We are quite apt to forget the wide difference between winter and spring, and continue winter treatment. At this time nearly all plants ought to be making vigorous growth. Growing plants always require a great deal more water than dormant plants. In winter, when the days were short and the sun low, but little evaporation took place; but now the sun is stronger and shines for several hours, and this, with the greater demand of the plants because of growth, will make it necessary to water liberally, perhaps as often as every other day. Do not fail to attend to this, because much of the future welfare of the plant depends on the treatment which it receives at this time. Neglect means an unsatisfactory plant later on.

If you have a greenhouse be careful about regulating the temperature of it during the day. After eight o’clock on sunny days shut off all artificial heat. The sun will furnish more than is necessary. It will be necessary on most days to open the ventilators in order to secure a proper temperature. About four o’clock on cloudy days it may be advisable to turn on a pipe to make sure that the temperature does not fall too low at night. This applies to the extreme northern range of states. Further south fire heat will be unnecessary, unless in exceptional cases. Great harm can be done by keeping a greenhouse too warm. It causes a weak, unhealthy growth, and so lowers the vitality of the plants, that they often become diseased to such an extent that they fail to recover from it all summer. Sixty-five to seventy-five degrees during the day, and sixty to sixty-five degrees at night, is about right for a mixed collection.

WATCH your plants, when growing actively, and when you see a branch starting out where none is needed, nip it off. Do not let it grow for weeks and then cut it off, because, by so doing, all the vitality of the plant which went to the production of that branch is wasted. If “nipped in the bud,” this strength would have been thrown into the plant and thus saved. If one branch seems inclined to get the start of others, pinch off the end of it promptly. This will temporarily check it, and the others may be enabled to gain on it sufficiently to hold their own by the time it gets started again. All lovers of flowers like to have finely formed plants, but they seldom have them, because they neglect them at the growing season. Then is the time to train and prune them, for your plant is developing from day to day, and this development can be controlled by patient watchfulness and attention.

IF you have seedlings growing in pots or boxes, be sure to put them out of doors every day when the weather is pleasant, where they may get the benefit of the fresh air. This accustoms them to outdoor conditions before the time comes to put them in the beds, and helps to harden them. If kept in the house all the time they will become spindling and weak, and when they are transplanted to the garden beds many of them or most of them will die because they haven’t sufficient vitality to “pull them through” the change. During the early stages of its existence, a plant is much like a child, and must have more care and attention than later on, because it is developing, and everything depends on a healthy development.

THERE will be such warm and pleasant days in April that quite likely you will be deluded into a belief that it is time to go to work in the garden. But don’t do it just yet. “One swallow does not make a summer,” you know. Wait until the weather can be depended on to stay warm. A warm and sunshiny April day is quite likely to be followed by a very cool or frosty night. May is quite early enough, at the north, to begin garden work.

Eben E. Rexford, Editor; Philadelphia, 1892