Some ladies understand budding, and this is a very interesting process. In this way an army of sweetbriers can be covered with yellow Marshal Neills and royal Jacqueminots. To propagate by layers is, however, the easiest way, if, indeed, one does not prefer to buy them all started. For garden roses we need vigorous growers that are sure to flower freely, and will contribute to the gayety of the garden. One of the best—the old-fashioned damask—if set out well, will blossom for thirty years. A very effective garden of roses is produced by roses pegged down. A deep, rather rich, loamy soil is to be prepared, the position selected being rather open. When the plants are about a foot high peg down the strongest growths. The rose prefers a firm soil. Those who desire to have firm blooms the second season must cut off a few inches of the flowering wood as soon as the first bloom is over, and give the beds a thorough soaking of manure or sewage-water every third or fourth day. But in this, as in every sort of cultivation of an especial flower, one should buy an especial treatise on the subject.
Every lady gardener is troubled by insect pests—the horrid green canker-worm, the little green louse, the potato-bug; these are everywhere. One fights them with all sorts of powders and all sorts of syringes. One very simple cure is not generally known. It is to plant a lettuce beside your rose; the vermin prefers the lettuce. It is the same principle which induced the rich owner of a wine-cellar to put a barrel of whisky beside his best Madeira; the whisky went, but the Madeira stayed. Dirty flower-pots, filled with dry moss, put in the neighborhood, will catch large numbers of these gentry, for vermin are fond of dirt. Dusting with powdered lime, or sulphurized tobacco-dust, will kill the insects which destroy the asters. Lettuces also save the asters, and a bed of green lettuce is not an ugly “bedding-out” plant.
No manure is so good as that common rotted vegetation of the forest. Bring a pailful home from every drive, and it will make your flowers grow. Nothing, also, so good as this for that lovely flower, the pansy, which thus recalls its early start in the forest, The pansy does not require much water, but in very hot, dry weather the beds should be sprinkled at night with a watering-pot.
But these few directions may seem impertinent, as every lady has now the most ample means of reading up about her garden. The cultivation of a few flowers in the house—window gardening—is by far the more essentially a Home Amusement. And, as almost everybody has once bought a lot of greenhouse plants but to see them fade before her eyes, we recommend to all to either raise a slip from the root or to start very young plants in a dark room. Thus accustomed to the atmosphere of the house they are to live in, they do sometimes live.
The hardier roses, the calla-lily, all the geraniums (useful dear creatures), the violets and the pinks, grow well in the house. Hanging pots of calceolarias and healthy primroses are also possible. Some ladies can raise azaleas at home, but they are difficult. Then there is the kangaroo-vine, and the Jerusalem, and all the other very hardy vines. If a large ivy-vine can he induced to grow over a picture-frame, it is a beautiful friend in midwinter.
Then come the delightful hanging baskets, the Wardian fern-cases, the ornamental stands of pot-plants, and the indoor box of earth for planting rice and grass seed, the wild flowers, which now have become exotics, and all the pretty fancies of throwing seed over a wet sponge. Anything green in winter looks lovely. Nothing more charming than the branches of nasturtion growing in water can be imagined. They grow and flower all winter, and the blue convolvulus flourishes well in a hanging basket; so do the common morning-glory and the scarlet bean, both delightful, airy visitors at Christmas.
A wire-work ox-muzzle, filled with moss, makes an admirable basket. It should be painted dark green, and hang over a box of growing flowers, so that it can drip when watered and hurt nothing. Put in the ivy-leaved geranium to drop over its edges; fuchsia, variegated geranium, bright blue lobelia, and the healthful dracænas, begonias, and sedums also make a very pretty combination. The gardeners give you wooden baskets filled with flowers, and ivy, and ferns, but it is Home Amusement to make these baskets yourself.
Fern-cases are delightful as winter friends. Wardian cases can be made very cheaply, and their perpetual condensation and shower is a very pretty study in physics. A large case, in which large-sized ferns can be accommodated, is best. As regards cultivation, the first thing that demands attention is the drainage of the case; for, if that is defective, neither ferns nor any other plants can be cultivated successfully. In order to secure good drainage the case should be fitted with a false bottom, into which the water may drain through perforated zinc or iron, on which the rock-work and little bank for the ferns should be placed. The false bottom, being a little kind of tank or drainer, should be perfectly water-tight, so as to protect the carpet, and should have a tap fixed in one corner of it, by means of which the surplus water should be drained off.
To be able to give free ventilation to the plants every morning is another essential point, as a stagnant atmosphere is as injurious to plants as it is to young children. Over the perforated tray of the case a good layer of broken pottery should be laid, and this should be covered with cocoanut fiber, on which the rock-work should be laid. The space in which it is intended that the ferns are to grow should then be filled in; and nothing is better than peat, rotten turf, and sharp grit sand as a soil for ferns. In the parts of the case intended for the planting of rather strong-growing ferns a larger proportion of rotten turf should be mixed with the peat than in those intended for less robust varieties. The adiantum pedatum (maidenhair), capillus veneris, pteris tessulata, eretica, albo lineata, polypodium vulgare, acrophorus chairophyllus, hispidus anemia adiantifolia, asplenium striatum, bulbiferum, with trichomanes and lelazinellas, are all useful, pretty ferns for these cases. If the fern-case be large, it might be advisable to have an arch reaching from end to end.
But any intelligent gardener will tell more in an hour than we could do in a week on the subject of ferns. Many ladies delight in selecting these lovely aristocrats of the forest themselves. They find no difficulty in arranging a little family of native ferns in an improvised Ward’s case; and this pursuit, as a reason for a woodland ramble and a subsequent fit of industry on the back piazza, is one which has no end as a Home Amusement.