It is a good plan to use the grass-clippings from the lawn as a mulch about your plants in hot, dry weather.
Do not begin to water plants in a dry season unless you can keep up the practice. Better let them take the chances of pulling through without the application than to give it for a short time and then abandon it because of the magnitude of the task.
Furnish racks and trellises for such plants as need them as soon as they are needed. Many a good plant is spoiled by neglecting to give attention to its requirements at the proper time.
Make it a rule to go over the garden at least twice a week, after the flowering season sets in, and cut away all faded flowers. If this is done, no seed will come to development, and the strength of the plants will be expended in the production of other flowers. By keeping up this practice through the season, it is possible to keep most of them blossoming until late in the summer, as they will endeavor to perpetuate themselves by the production of seed, and the first step in this process is the production of flowers.
What flowers would you advise us to grow? many readers of this chapter will be sure to ask, after having read what I have said above about the garden of annuals.
In answering this question here, it will be necessary, in a measure, to repeat what has been, or will be, said in other chapters, where various phases of gardening are treated. But the question is one that should be answered in this connection, at the risk of repetition, in order to fully cover the subject now under consideration.
There are so many kinds of flowers offered by the seedsmen that it is a difficult matter to decide between them, when all are so good. But no one garden is large enough to contain them all. Were one to attempt the cultivation of all he would be obliged to put in all his time at the work, and the services of an assistant would be needed, besides. Even then the chances are that the work would be done in a superficial fashion. Therefore I shall mention only such kinds as I consider the very best of the lot for general use, adding this advice:
Don't attempt too much. A few good kinds, well grown, will afford a great deal more pleasure than a great many kinds only half grown.
This list is made up of such kinds as can properly be classed as "stand-bys," kinds which any amateur gardener can be reasonably sure of success with if the instructions given in this chapter are carefully followed.
Alyssum.—Commonly called Sweet Alyssum, because of its pleasing fragrance. Of low growth. Very effective as an edging. Most profuse and constant bloomer.