Dahlias.
It is difficult to find room for Dahlias in a very small garden, but even one will give you a great deal of pleasure if you manage it well, as the flowers go on for a long time, and are most useful for cutting. Whether you have one or more, you must remember that the Cactus Dahlias grow from four to six feet high, and that each plant makes a big bush. The pretty little Pom-poms are rather shorter, and can be placed in front of their big brothers. We advise you to grow these kinds, and not what are called show varieties, which are stiff and, we think, ugly. Dahlias are greedy feeders, and wherever you mean to plant one you should get someone to dig in manure eighteen inches down. About the end of April or early in May, according to the season and your climate, you put out your Dahlias. If they are spring-rooted cuttings in a pot, all you have to do at first is to take them out of the pot, plant them, and look out for slugs. They will devour every one if they can. If you are given a tuberous root, you must put it five or six inches deep in the ground. It is of no use to grow Dahlias unless you can stake and tie them properly, as they become very heavy, and are ruined by a high wind if unsupported. Stout, square green stakes are made on purpose for Dahlias, and if you are far away from a town where they are to be had, you must get someone to cut and point you natural ones equally strong. For Cactus Dahlias they should be five or six feet long, and for Pom-poms four feet; and at least one foot of this length must be driven firmly into the ground. Do not tie with raffia, but with stout cord or coir, as nothing else is strong enough. When the frosts come you can take up your Dahlias and store them in a dry cellar; but unless you have a gardener to help you, we do not think you could strike cuttings from them in heat, in spring. You will find in autumn that the little plant you put out of a pot in May has made a big tuber, with a number of fingers. These should be left as they are till spring comes again, and then they may be carefully separated with a sharp knife and put as they are into the ground. Each piece will make a fresh plant. In sheltered parts of Devonshire and Cornwall, Dahlias, after being cut down, are often given a little covering of straw and manure and left in the ground.
CHAPTER V
BIENNIALS
Biennials are plants that do not flower till the second year after sowing. They are sown in spring and summer, pricked out when large enough, and transplanted, either in the autumn or the following spring, to their flowering places. If you can only have a small patch in a small garden, we advise you to buy, ready-grown, every spring, the few biennials you need. You can get all the well-known ones cheaply by the dozen, or just as they have been sown in a box. But if you are one of those lucky children who grow up in a big garden, we advise you to beg for a little extra bit for a ‘nursery,’ and then to try your hand at growing some of the easier biennials and perennials from seed. Some people will tell you that this operation is beyond the skill and patience of any child, but we think that if you will follow our instructions carefully you might succeed. Do not dream of trying all we tell you about in one season. In every chapter we speak of more plants than any one child could crowd into one small garden. You must choose some of your great favourites to begin with, and each year add a few new ones to the plants you have learnt to manage well.
Skilled gardeners grow some biennials, as annuals, by raising the seed in frames and greenhouses early in the year; but this, we think, would be too difficult for children to do without help. So you must, as we have said, buy your biennials ready-made, or you must get someone to raise them in heat for you, or you can sow your own seed one year, understanding that the seedlings will not flower till the next. Of these three plans we think the purchase of ready-made seedlings the easiest, but in some ways the least satisfactory. At any rate, if you must adopt it, try to get them from good nurserymen. Those you buy in the London streets or from advertisement columns are often grievously disappointing, so that when your biennials flower you discover you have thrown your money and your labour away. Your Snapdragons are either hideously splotchy or crudely magenta; your pink Canterbury Bells are blue and white; your Wallflowers are spindly and colourless. A few experiences of this kind will soon drive you to buy your own seed from one of the best firms, and for a few pence and some happy hours of gardening to get more plants of the best colour and quality than you can possibly use. Then you will have the pleasure the true gardener always finds in giving some of his plants away, or you can exchange your surplus stock for plants you do not possess yet.