Don't plant them out in the garden-beds, thinking thereby to save yourself the work of taking care of them during the summer and of benefiting them at the same time. Of course they will take care of themselves there, and very likely make a much more luxuriant growth than they would in pots, but when fall comes and you have to lift and repot them you will find that more hard work is required of you than you would have expended on them throughout the summer if you had kept them in pots. As for the benefit to the plants—where will it come in? They will have made such a rampant growth of roots that most of them will have to be sacrificed in reducing the earth containing them to the size of the pots you put them into, and this at the very time when the poor plants ought to be at their best in order to successfully withstand the unfavorable conditions resulting from the change from outdoors to indoors. Plants treated in this manner receive a check that they seldom fully recover from during the entire winter. Instead of saving yourself work and doing a kindness to your plants, you have done just the contrary.
XIX
A CHAPTER OF HELPFUL HINTS
In some of the foregoing chapters I have had something to say about the advisability of using seed in which each color is kept by itself in order to secure the greatest possible degree of color-harmony in the garden.
Many persons tell us that they cannot afford to pay the extra prices which the seedsmen put on unmixed seed. It is true that it costs more than the seed in which all colors are jumbled together, and it is also true that plants grown from it are really no better than those grown from mixed seed, but the fact remains that it gives so much more satisfactory results, from an artistic standpoint, that it is not throwing money away, as some claim, to make use of it. Of course if one gets as much pleasure from a mass of color without regard to harmony as from fewer colors all in perfect harmony with one another, it would hardly be worth while to invest more money in such seed. But where the finest possible effects are desired I contend that unmixed seed is cheapest, in that sense of the term that means the greatest satisfaction.
There is a way by which unmixed seed can be obtained without its really costing each person more than mixed seed. Every amateur gardener knows that more plants of a kind can be grown from one package of seed than a person cares for in the average-sized garden. Nine times out of ten only part of the seed in the package is sown and the rest is either discarded or given away to friends. Now if those who would like to secure the best results in gardening will get up a seed club among their flower-loving friends, and confine their selection to packages in which each color is by itself, the seed in those packages can be divided among the various members of the club, and each person will have enough to meet her requirements, and this at a less price than she would have to pay for ordinary mixed seed if she were to order alone, because none of the seed would be wasted.
Try the seed-club plan for a season and see if it doesn't work out to your satisfaction.
If you are likely to have more plants of a kind than you care for, don't throw any of the seedlings away when you thin them out. There are poor children in every neighborhood that would be delighted to get them. Never waste any plants that are worth growing.