One cannot grow very many things in a window box, but it is most interesting to grow a few. In a town it is often all the garden that many people possess.
The length of a window-box will depend on the size of the window. Its depth should be ten inches at least. At the bottom of the box some cinders or other rough material should be put, and then it should be filled up with the best earth you can get. And because of the difference it makes to the growth of your flowers it is worth while to take a great deal of trouble in getting good, rich mould. The earth may be kept level, or heaped up at one or both ends, and a few stones added to make a tiny rockery, in which you can grow small saxifrages and other rock plants.
Flowers for Window-Boxes
Nasturtiums and canary creeper can climb up a little trellis made of sticks at each end of the box, or they can cling to strings fixed to the box and nailed high up at the side of the window. Wandering Jew or ivy-leaved geranium will fall over the front of the box and make it look very gay. Bulbs, such as winter aconite, squills, snowdrops, a few daffodils, tulips and irises, will grow well in boxes. These should be planted rather deep. Then primroses and forget-me-nots can be planted, and in May a border of lobelia, one or two geraniums, pansies, fuchsias, a plant of lemon verbena, and some musk. Mignonette, Virginia stock, collinsia, should be sown in spring in little patches or lines.
Keep the leaves of all the plants as clean as possible by gentle watering with a rose. Never let the earth get dry from neglect, or sodden from too much watering; yet water well, for driblets only affect the surface, and it is the roots far down in the box that need moisture.
Cutting Flowers and Packing Them—Flowers for Post
It is best, if possible, to pick flowers the day before you want to send them off. Pick them in the afternoon, sort them and bunch them up, and then stand them in water right up to their heads, and keep them there over night. A basin is the best thing to put the flowers in, unless the stalks are very long, and a jam-pot or two in the water will help to keep them from tumbling over and drifting about. Be very careful that the blooms do not touch the water. Keep the flowers in water until you are ready to pack them. Tin boxes are best to send flowers away in; but generally one has to use cardboard ones. Choose the strongest you can find and line it with two sheets of paper, one across and one long ways, and each long enough to fold over when it is full. Then line again with some big cool leaves or moss. Dry the flowers and pack them as tightly as possible, taking great care not to crush the petals. Cover them with a few more leaves and fold the paper over. Then wrap up the box, remembering to write the address on a label tied at one end of the box, so that the postmark will not be stamped on the box itself and perhaps break it.
Picking Flowers
When you are picking flowers to send away, never pick old ones. Buds are best generally, especially in the case of poppies; but they should be buds just on the point of opening. Always use scissors to cut flowers with. A very slight tug at a little plant in dry weather pulls its roots out of the ground. Cut the flowers with long stems and with some of their green leaves, and at the top of the box that you are sending away it is pleasant always to put something which smells very sweetly—lemon verbena, or mignonette—for that first sweet scent is one of the very best things about receiving a present of this kind.