Oleander. While there are many named varieties of the Oleander, but two are often seen in general cultivation. These are the common red and white varieties. Both these, as well as the named varieties, are of easy management and well adapted to home culture, growing in pots or tubs for several years without special care. Well-grown specimens are very effective as porch or lawn plants, or may be used to good advantage in mixed beds of tall-growing plants, plunging the pot or tub to the rim in the soil. The plants should be cut back after flowering. They should be rested in any out-of-the-way place through the winter. When brought out in the spring, they should be given sun and air in order to make a sturdy growth. Propagation is effected by using well-ripened wood for cuttings, placed in a close frame; or the slips may be rooted in a bottle or can of water, care being taken to supply water as evaporation takes place. After being rooted, they may be potted, using soil with a large proportion of sand. Well established plants may be repotted in good loam and well rotted manure.
Onions are grown from seeds (“black seed”) for the main crop. They are also grown from sets (which are very small Onions, arrested in their development), from “tops” (which are bulblets produced in the place of flowers), and from multipliers or potato onions, which are compound bulbs.
Early Onions
The extremely early crop of Onions is grown from sets, and the late or fall crop is grown from seed sown in April or early May. The sets may be saved from the crop harvested the previous fall, saving no bulbs measuring over ¾ of an inch in diameter, or, better, they may be purchased from the seedsman. These sets should be planted as early as possible in the spring, preferably on land that has been manured and trenched in the fall. Plant in rows 12 inches apart, the sets being 2 or 3 inches in the row. Push the sets well down into the ground and cover with soil, firming them with the feet or a roller. In cultivating, the soil should be thrown towards the tops, as the white stems are usually sought as an indication of mildness. The crop will be in condition to use in from three to four weeks, and may be made to last until small seed Onions are to be had. Tops or multipliers may also be used for the early crop.
In growing Onions from seed, it is only necessary to say that the seed should be in the ground very early in order that the bulbs make their growth before the extreme hot weather of August, when, for want of moisture and because of the heat, the bulbs will ripen up while small. Early in April, in New York, if the ground is in condition, the seed should be sown thickly in drills from 12 to 16 inches apart, and the ground above the seeds well firmed. Good cultivation and constant weeding is the price of a good crop of Onions. In cultivating and hoeing, the soil should be kept away from the rows, not covering the growing bulbs, but allowing them to spread over the surface of the ground. When the crop is ready to be harvested, the bulbs may be pulled or cultivated up, left to dry in double rows for several days, the tops and roots taken off, and the bulbs stored in a dry place. Later in the season they may be allowed to freeze, covering with chaff or straw to hold them frozen, and kept until early spring; but this method is usually unsafe with beginners, and always so in a changeable climate. Onion seed should always be fresh when sown—preferably of the last year’s crop. One ounce of Onion seed will sow 100 feet of drill.
One of the recent methods of obtaining extra large bulbs from seed is to sow the seed in a hotbed in February or early March, and transplant to the open ground in April.
The Danvers, Prizetaker, Globe and Wethersfield are favorite varieties, with the addition of White Queen or Barletta for pickling.
Oxalis. A number of hardy species of this are excellent plants for rockwork and edging. The greenhouse species are very showy, growing without extra care, and blooming freely through the late winter and spring months; these are mostly increased by bulbs, a few by division of the root. O. violacea is one of the commonest of house-plants. Give a sunny window, for the flowers open only in sun or very bright light. The bulbous kinds are treated as recommended for [Bulbs], except that the bulbs must not freeze.
