Floriculture is an employment appropriate to all classes, ages, and conditions. No yard connected with a dwelling is complete without a flower-bed. The cultivation of flowers is eminently promotive of health, refinement of manners, and good taste. Constant familiarity with the most exquisite beauties of nature must refine the feelings and produce gentleness of spirit. Association with flowers should be a part of every child's education. Their cultivation is suitable for children and young ladies in all the walks of life.
House-plants, and bouquets in sick-rooms, are injurious; their influence on the atmosphere of the rooms is unhealthy. But the cultivation of flowers in the garden or yard is in every way beneficial. We earnestly recommend increased attention to flowers by the whole American people. The necessary limits of our article will allow us to do but little more than to call attention to the subject. Those who become interested will seek information from some of the numerous works devoted exclusively to ornamental flowers.
Flowers should be planted on rather level land, that the rains may not wash off the seeds and fine mould. Choose a southern or eastern exposure whenever practicable. Avoid, as much as possible, planting in the shade.
Soil—Should be a deep, rich mould, neither too wet nor too dry, and should be enriched with a little compost, every year.
Sowing the Seeds is a most important matter in cultivating flowers. Many fail to come up, solely on account of improper planting. The seeds of most flowers are very fine and delicate. Planted in coarse earth, they will not vegetate; planted near the surface in a dry time, they usually perish. It is best to cover all small flower-seeds, by sifting fine mould upon them; and if the weather does not do it, use artificial means to keep the soil suitably moist until the seeds are fairly up. Stir the soil gently often, and keep out all weeds. It is always best to plant the seeds in rows or hills, with small stakes to indicate their location; you can then stir the ground freely without destroying them. Flowers usually need more watering than most other plants. The usual application of water to the leaves by using a sprinkler is injurious; it may be better than no watering at all, but is the worst way to apply water. Make a basin in the soil near the plants, and fill it with water. The selection of suitable varieties for a small flower-garden is quite important. We shall only mention a brief list. Those who would make this more of a study, are recommended to study "Breck's Book of Flowers," which is quite as complete for American cultivators as anything we have. The principal divisions are, bulbous flowering roots, flowering shrubs, and flowering herbs—annual, biennial, and perennial—the first blossoming and dying the year they are sown; the second blossoming and dying the second year, without having blossomed the first; the last blossoming, and the top dying down and coming up the next spring, for a series of years.
Bulbous Flowering Roots.—These need considerable sand in their soil. They should be taken up after the foliage is all dead, and if they are hardy, put the soil in good condition, and dry the bulbs and reset them, and let them remain through the winter. They may need slight protection, by spreading coarse straw, manure, or forest-leaves over them late in the fall; but all the more tender bulbs do better kept in sand until early spring. The best list with which we are acquainted, for a small garden, is the following: the well-known lilies, the tulips, gladiolas, hyacinths, Feraria tigrida, crocus, narcissus, and jonquils.
Flowering Shrubs.—The following is a select small list: Roses, as large a variety as you please, out of the hundreds known; flowering almond, Indigo shrub, wahoo or fire-shrub, the mountain-ash, althea, snowball, lilac, fringe-tree, snow-drop, double-flowering peach, Siberian crab, the smoke-tree, or French tree, or Venitian sumach, honeysuckle, double-flowering cherry.
The list of beautiful herbaceous flowers is very lengthy. We give only a few of those most easily raised, and most showy; the list is designed only to aid the inquiries of those who are unacquainted with them: superb amaranth, tri-colored amaranth, China and German astors—the latter are very beautiful—Canterbury bell, carnation pinks (great variety), chrysanthemum (many varieties and splendid until very late in autumn), morning glory or convolvulus, japonicas, Cupid's car, dahlias, dwarf bush, morning bride or fading beauty, fox-glove, golden coreopsis (we have raised a variety that proved biennial, which was superb all the season), ice-plant, larkspur, passion-flower, peony, sweet pea, pinks, sweet-williams, annual China pink, polyanthus (a great beauty), hyacinth bean, scarlet-runner bean, poppy, portalucca, nasturtium, marigolds (especially the large double French, and the velvet variegated), martineau, cypress vine.
FOWLS.
We are glad to believe that the hen mania, that has prevailed so extensively during the last fifteen or twenty years, has considerably abated. After all the extravagant notions about the profits of hens shall have passed away, the truth will be seen to be about the following: Every farmer who has considerable waste grain about, and plenty more to supply the deficiency when the fowls shall have gathered up all the scatterings, had better keep a hundred hens. If he has sand and gravel, and wheat-bran and lime for shells, within their reach, and plenty of fresh water, they will do well, without much further care, in mild weather. In cold weather in winter, keep not more than forty hens together, in a tight, warm place, well ventilated; give them their usual food, with burnt bones pounded fine and mixed with mush, given warm, with occasionally a little animal food and boiled vegetables, and they will lay more than in summer. They will lay all winter without being inclined to set. Every family, who will treat them as above, may profitably keep one or two dozen through the winter. Most persons who undertake, with a few acres of land, to keep fowls as a business, will lose by it. A few only of the most experienced and careful can make money by it. It may be cheapest for some persons to raise a few chickens for their own use, although they cost them more than the market-price, though it would not be best to raise chickens in that way to sell. "But some one raised the chickens in market for the market-price, and why not I?" Because, they raised a few that got fat on waste grain, and you must buy grain for yours, and give more for it than you can get for your chickens. Whoever would make money by raising fowls on a large scale, must first serve some kind of an apprenticeship at it, as in all other business. Get this experience, and learn by experiment the cheapest and most profitable food, and keep from five hundred to a thousand fowls, and a reasonable though not large profit may be realized. For store-fowls, boiled vegetables and beets cut very fine, with a little meal mixed in, are a good and cheap feed. When keeping fowls out-door in warm weather, keep no more than fifty together, and them on not less than one fourth of an acre of land. The expensive hen-houses and artificial nests are mostly humbugs. Have many places of concealment about, where they can make their nests as they please. When a hen begins to set, remove her, nest and all, to a yard to which layers have no access, and you need have no difficulty with her. Set a hen near the ground, in a dry place, on fifteen fresh eggs, all put under her at once, and they will hatch about the same time at the end of twenty days. Old hens, of the common kind, are best to set. Let them have their own way in everything but running in the wet with their young chickens—and that they will not be much inclined to do if they are well fed. Much is said about the diseases of fowls and their remedies. We have very little confidence in any of it. Sick chickens will die unless they get well. Time spent in doctoring them does not generally pay. Wormwood and tansy, growing, or gathered and scattered, or steeped and sprinkled about the premises occupied by hens, will protect them from small vermin. Never give them anything salt or sour, unless it be sour milk. The eggs of ducks, turkeys, or geese, may be hatched under hens. Time, thirty days. Hence, if put under with hens' eggs, they must be set ten days earlier, that they may all hatch at once. Fattening chickens may be well done in six days, by feeding rice, boiled rather soft in sweet skimmed milk, fed plentifully three times a day. Feed these in pans, well cleaned before each meal, and give only what they will eat up at once, and desire a very little more. Put a little pounded charcoal within their reach, and a little rice-water, milk, or clear water. This makes the most beautiful meal at a low price. Never feed a chicken for sixteen or twenty-four hours before killing it.