Different varieties of perennials ought to be kept track of quite as much as in the case of shrubs. As the old stalks die away and are cut off each season, there is no part of the plant to which a label can be attached with any permanence. There are iron sockets on the market into which the piece of wood bearing the name of the variety can be inserted. An all-wool label would speedily decay in contact with the soil.
Sometimes we get very amusing letters from parties "in search of information." Not long ago a woman sent me a leaf from her Boston Fern, calling my attention to the "bugs" on the lower side of it, and asking how she could get rid of them. How did I suppose they contrived to arrange themselves with such regularity? A little careful investigation would have shown her that the rows of "bugs" were seed-spores. If anything about your plants puzzles you, use your eyes and your intelligence, and endeavor to find out the "whys and wherefores" for yourself. You will enjoy doing this when you once get into the habit of it. Information that comes to us through our own efforts is always appreciated much more than that which comes to us second-hand. Make a practice of personal investigation in order to get at a solution of the problems that will constantly confront you in gardening operations.
In answer to another correspondent who asked me to recommend some thoroughly reliable fertilizer, I advised "old cow-manure." Back came a letter, saying I had neglected to state how old the cow ought to be!
But the funny things are not all said by our correspondents. I lately came across an article credited to a leading English gardening magazine in which the statement was made that a certain kind of weed closely resembling the Onion often located itself in the Onion-bed in order to escape the vigilance of the weed-puller, its instinct telling it that its resemblance to the Onion would deceive the gardener! Is anyone foolish enough to believe that the weed knew just where to locate itself, and had the ability to put itself there? One can but laugh at such "scientific statements," and yet it seems too bad to have people humbugged so.
A woman writes: "I don't care very much about plants. I never did. But almost everybody grows them, nowadays, and I'd like to have a few for my parlor, so as to be in style. You know the old saying that 'one might as well be out of the world as out of fashion.' I wish you'd tell me what to get, and how to take care of it. I want something that will just about take care of itself. I don't want anything I'll have to bother with."
My advice to this correspondent was, "Don't try to grow plants."