Watering these plants is a matter of prime importance. Generally water is applied carelessly and irregularly—too much to-day, and none at all to-morrow. We saturate the soil with it while only enough is required to make it moist. An over-supply of water at the roots, combined with too much heat and lack of fresh air, will undermine the constitution of any plant, because such a combination excites unnatural development, and this means a lowering of the vital force to the danger-point.
I have devised a method by which I have succeeded in controlling the supply of moisture in the soil to my complete satisfaction. I use boxes about four inches deep to start my plants in. In the bottom of these boxes I put sphagnum moss. There should be at least an inch of it after it has been pressed down by the weight of the soil above. The bottom of the seed-box is bored full of small holes. Each box sets in a shallow pan of galvanized iron, on a layer of coarse gravel, which raises it enough to allow water to circulate freely under it. Water is poured into the iron pan, using enough to come up about half an inch above the bottom of the seed-box, or in contact with the moss in it, and it should be kept at this height at all times. The moss absorbs the moisture like a sponge, and the soil above constantly sucks up all that is needed to keep it in a sufficiently moist condition to meet the requirements of the plants growing in it. The absorbent qualities of the moss are such that an excessive amount of moisture is never communicated to the soil above. Thus I secure a steady and even supply, which does away entirely with the danger resulting from the application of water to the surface of the soil from watering-pot or basin.
If the temperature can be controlled in such a way that it will not vary much from 60 to 65°, if the soil can be kept moist but never wet, and fresh air can be given in generous quantity regularly, it will be found a comparatively easy matter to grow plants satisfactorily from seed in the house, and have them in such healthy condition by the time it is safe to put them out in the garden that they will average up well with the plants the professional gardener raises in hotbed and cold-frame. By the use of such plants, and such plants only, can we expect to grow early vegetables successfully.
VII
STANDARD VARIETIES OF VEGETABLES
The amateur gardener will find it extremely perplexing work to make a satisfactory selection of varieties of vegetables to grow in his garden. He knows quite well, as a general thing, what kinds he wants to grow, but when he comes to a consultation of the seedsmen's catalogues he discovers that of each kind of vegetable listed therein there are so many varieties mentioned that he is bewildered. Most of them are described as being so desirable that he cannot help getting the impression that if he rules out this or that one he is likely to deprive himself of the very thing from which he would obtain the highest degree of satisfaction. Nine times out of ten he finds, after going through the catalogues and marking the kinds and varieties that appeal to him most forcibly, that he has a list which would furnish enough seed to supply an average-sized market-garden.
I would advise the amateur gardener to attempt the culture of only a few of the many varieties described in the catalogues, and these of the very best. But what constitutes "the very best" is a hard matter for him to decide where all are described by adjectives in the superlative degree. He will find, by comparing the catalogues of the various seed firms, that there are described in most of them certain varieties of each kind of vegetable that seem common to all, along with many other varieties whose names differ greatly, though the descriptions of them indicate that there is not much difference in quality, or in other general respects. If he confines his selection to such varieties of each kind as the various dealers list under the same names in their catalogues he will be making no mistake, for the fact that all leading dealers carry these varieties in stock is sufficient proof that they are standard varieties, and of such superior merit that no up-to-date dealer can afford to exclude them from his list.