The enterprise in getting out the artistic and truly beautiful Floral
Guide, and sending it into our homes during the inclement weather of
these winter days, when we have time to sit by the fireside and study
its pages, enables us, against the time to plant seeds, to know exactly
what we would like to have among vegetables and flowers. This beautiful
compendium of vegetables and flowers came as a herald of the new year,
and as the new year seems always to bring the spring season near, so it
naturally fills the mind with the pleasurable anticipations of the task
of seed planting.
The plant beds are little squares made of very rich soil, black and
friable, with sand intermixed, on the sunny side of the garden palings
that have a solid base board, or a wall or house, to afford protection.
The rich soil makes a good bottom heat for forcing gentle growth. My old
colored mammy, who always saved the garden seeds and gave them out as
needed and directed the gardening operations on the plantation, had the
plant beds made on each side of the garden gate, one set of little beds
for early vegetable plants, the other for flowers. The soil thoroughly
pulverized, and the seeds planted thickly, it is surprising how they
would spring into life, and the rapidity with which they would grow.
Thick planting of seeds is only to be advised when they are intended for
transplanting. I have seen the cabbage bed so full of plants that it
seemed as if two plants or more had sprung from every seed. Early and
late cabbage, the rows labeled, can be planted in the same bed; lettuce,
pepper grass, parsley and radishes in another, taking care to sow the
radish seed thinly as the plants will not transplant well, and the
radishes must be used for the table taken from the place where the seeds
are sown. Cabbages grow better when the small plants are transplanted to
the large bed where they are to stand for their season’s growth.
After these early vegetable plants have been set out, later on tomato
and egg plant seeds can be sown in the same beds. Nothing is gained by
forcing these latter, for in my experience certain vegetable and flower
seeds do better planted late, as the heat of summer is needed for their
development.
The plant bed can be made and planted early in the season. Here in the
South many persons plant in “old Christmas,” the first twelve days after
New Year, but February or March is better, I believe.
The flowers that do so well in company with these vegetables are
sweet alyssum, nemophila, mignonette, snapdragon, candytuft, verbena,
sanvitalia and petunias. Japanese pinks and Marguerite carnations, Phlox
Drummondii and poppies are better planted where they are to bloom as they
do not transplant well. Sweet alyssum and nemophila begin to bloom when
about an inch high, and can be transplanted at any stage of growth, even
in bloom; they are sweet little flowers that make lovely borders, cute
little jars, beautiful hanging baskets, and when planted in the sides of
jars that contain large plants, hang over the sides in masses of bloom.
The speckled pretty little blue nemophila always makes me think of birds’
nests full of speckled eggs in the cool green grass. Sweet alyssum I love
too well to write about; it would sound like exaggeration.
Petunias do well in the early beds, but also flourish and bloom finely if
their planting is deferred until the torenia, portulaca, cypress, zinnia,
tageta and real midsummer flowers are planted. None of these last do
any better for early planting. They will not bloom until their season,
summer, no matter how early they are planted. The beautiful fall bloomer,
cosmos, may be classed with them. Snapdragons, carnations and verbena
do not bloom in early spring from seed, but require an early start to
bloom in summer as their growth is not rapid. Sanvitalia, vinca, and a
long list of annuals are beautiful and well worth raising. Annuals are
cheap, but they subserve a purpose and nothing quite takes their place,
and I confess to a liking for flowers which I have raised from seeds.
It is easy to exaggerate the beauty of anything that stands in striking
contrast to its surroundings, but these plant beds early in the season,
green and growing, ahead of everything else, are as pretty as a picture,
and the young, crisp, green vegetables are suggestive and appetizing.
If twenty-five years of putting Mr. Vick’s seeds in the ground does not
entitle me to render a verdict in their favor as the best to be had, then
experience counts for nothing. A sure return for every seed put in the
ground is the answer they give to the question “What shall the harvest
be?”
Further north, doubtless, cold frames are better for early planting
of seeds, but in the South the plants are more healthy and stand
transplanting much better for exposure to the moderate cold of the early
season in their rich, warm little plant beds.