Gloxinias
Like all fine seeds the Gloxinias often give a surprising number of plants from a single packet. The seed is sown on the surface of small flats in the house and the plants appear in about ten days. They are very tender at first and must be protected from undue heat, moisture, cold or draughts. They may be potted when large enough and plunged in the shady side of the sand-box, in a cold-frame, on the east side of the house, or in a shady corner in the open ground, where they will be protected from the sun during the hottest part of the day. Keep the soil constantly moist; a light mulch of sphagnum moss or lawn clippings will keep it in proper condition. Avoid wetting the foliage and as far as possible touching it. The stems of both leaf and blossom are very brittle and the slightest blow may deprive one of a cherished blossom. For this reason I like to grow them by themselves and use a mulch instead of cultivation. So much of the beauty of the plant depends upon the perfection of the foliage that every effort should be made to preserve it. In setting or potting Gloxinias the crown of the bulb should be above the earth, the soil should slope to the rim of the pot, that no water may settle about the crown and rot it. The plants may remain in the hotbed or other quarters until the approach of frost, when they must be shifted into larger pots and given a position in an east window with plenty of light. Gloxinias, if kept growing vigorously and shifted frequently, should bloom the following season. Some florists advise resting the bulb the first winter, but this, I think, is a mistake; the plant has done nothing to require a rest, nor has the bulb gained sufficient size to live without nourishment for any length of time, so that drying off is likely to result disastrously. After the Gloxinia has completed its period of bloom water should be gradually withheld and the foliage allowed to ripen. The bulbs may then be set away in their pots in a warm, dry place, until the following spring; or, if grown in hotbeds, they may be dried off by withholding water until the foliage ripens, when they may be lifted, wrapped in cotton-wool or tissue-paper, and stored in a dry, fairly warm place during the winter.