For the Home Gardener

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · May 5, 1904

For the Home Gardener

This is the month in which we begin to prepare for our summer garden.

Give your house plants more water, more fresh air and some kind of fertilizer. All of them should be making active growth.

This is the month when we may root our cuttings for later use, thus getting extra plants, also pruning the original plant. I use sand kept constantly moist, and cover the cuttings with a tumbler or glass jar, and I seldom lose a cutting.

Plant your tuberous begonias and gloxinias. Give them good drainage, and a sandy, fibrous soil. Keep them in a warm place until active growth is well under way.

Have you any chrysanthemums stored in the cellar? If so, bring them up, water well, and in a short time there will be numerous sprouts all over the top. Cut such of these as you wish, and root in moist sand, then keep them steadily growing, repotting as they need it.

This is a good time to start pansies, salvias, coleus, asters, and ageratum from seeds. By the time the ground is warm enough, they should be ready to plant out.

Syringe all plants often, and be on the war-path for the insect pests on the plants and in the soil. A little care and watchfulness every day is all that is required.

An excellent box in which seeds for early flowers can be sown is about eighteen inches long, fifteen inches wide, and three and a half inches deep. This box can be placed in the window beside the cutting-box. A good soil for the seed-box is made of three-fourths soddy loam and one-fourth sand. This mixture gives a soil which drains well, and does not run together after it has been watered a few times.

In this box can be sown pansy, verbena, petunia, snapdragon, sweet alyssum, salvia splendens, or seeds of any other similar plants which will stand transplanting and are desired for early blooming. Enough plants can be grown in a box of this size to supply a good-sized flower-garden.—Selected.