Snapdragons (Antirrhinum Majus).
These are most beautiful and useful flowers. They will do well in poor soil, and even on the tops of walls, where there is not much soil for them—in fact, some of the finest specimens, grown from self-sown seed, are to be found in such situations. There are three kinds: tall, medium, and dwarf, and there are a great variety of colours. Some are self-coloured, and some are mottled, striped, or flaked. If you buy cheap seedlings you get ugly magentas or poor, washed-out mixtures; while if you raise your own from good seed, you get most lovely shades. Snapdragons may be treated as annuals or biennials, and each has its own difficulty. If you treat them as annuals, you must raise the seed under glass in February, so as to have flowers in July. We think you probably have no greenhouse or frame of your own, so we will tell you how to grow Snapdragons out of doors as biennials. The difficulty in this case is not to get your stock of plants, but to keep them through the winter, as Snapdragons are not quite hardy, especially in a close, damp soil. We have heard of nursery gardeners losing their whole stock in a frost. On a light soil and near a south wall you can, with a hammer and nails and a few laths, knock up a wooden framework that will hold a piece of sacking or an Archangel mat over your plants, and keep the worst of the frost from them. If you can’t use a hammer and nails, and live in a cold climate, we think you will have to buy your Snapdragons every spring.
The seed of Snapdragons is very small, so it is a good plan to mix it with sand or fine soil before you sow it. The sowing can be done any time between April and August, and either in boxes or pans, or in the open ground. If you have a struggle with weeds in your garden, we advise you to sow all seeds that will bear transplantation in boxes or pans, as you can dodge the weeds better in this way. We have heard of people who poured a kettleful of boiling water over the soil they meant to use for seeds, so as to destroy the weeds in it first. If you do this, you must wait till the soil has passed through the soppy stage in which a flood of hot water leaves it before you put it in your seed-box. An old iron tray, no longer tidy enough for indoor use, is convenient for this and for many other garden operations. When your Snapdragons have four good leaves, prick them out in rows nine inches apart in the most sheltered corner you have, and protect them from frost till the spring, when they will make a show all through the summer in your border. You will find that some people get quite angry with you for growing tall ones or dwarf ones, according to the kind they themselves prefer, while other people will forbid you to look at a flaked or bizarre Snapdragon. You will have to bear this if you agree with us, and like both dwarf and tall ones, all the clear selfs, and even some of the bizarre. A ‘self’ in gardening jargon means one colour, as opposed to striped, flaked, or speckled.