In so far as instruction is concerned, I esteem my mistakes to be more
valuable than my successful efforts. They excite to attention and
investigation with great emphasis. I will record a few.
1. One mistake, which I record once for all, as it will probably occur
every year, has been the attempting of more than I could do _well_.
The ardor of spring, in spite of experience, lays out a larger garden,
than can be well tended all summer.
2. In selecting the _largest_ lima beans for seed, I obtained most
luxuriant vines, but fewer pods. If the season were longer these vines
would ultimately be most profitable; but their vigor gives a growth
too rampant for our latitude. If planted for a screen, however, the
rankest growers are the best.
3. Of three successive plantings of corn, for table use, the first was
the best, then the second, and the third very poor. I hoed and thinned
the first planting myself, and thoroughly; the second, I left to a
Dutchman, directing him how to do it; the third, I left to him without
directions.
4. I bought a stock of roses in the _fall of the year_. All the loss
of wintering came on me. If purchased in the spring, the nurserymen
loses, if there is loss.
5. I planted the silver-leaved abele (_Populus alba_) in a rich sandy
loam; in which it made more wood than it could ripen. The tree was
top-heavy, and required constant staking. A poorer soil should have
been selected.
6. I planted abundantly of flower-seeds—just before a drought. I
neither covered the earth with mats, nor watered it—supposing that the
seeds would come up after the first rain. But, in a cheerless and
barren garden, I have learned that _heat_ will kill planted seeds, and
that he who will be sure of flowers should not depend upon only one
planting.
7. In the fall of 1843, I took up the bulbs of tuberoses, and wintered
them safely upon the top of book-cases in a warm study. Having a
better and larger stock in 1844, I would fain be yet more careful, and
packed them in dry sand, and put them in a closet beyond the reach of
frost. On opening them in the spring all were rotted save about half a
dozen. Hereafter, I shall try the book-case.
8. We are told that glazed or painted flower-pots are not desirable,
because, refusing a passage to superfluous moisture, they leave the
roots to become sodden. In small stove-heated parlors, the evaporation
is so great that glazed or painted flower-pots are _best_, because the
danger is of dryness rather than dampness in _all plants growing in
sandy loams or composts_.
9. I have resolved every summer for three years, to cut pea-brush
during the winter and stack it in the shed; and every summer
following, not having kept the vow, I have lacked pea-brush, being too
busy to get it when it was needed, I have allowed the crop to suffer.