A great many biennial and perennial seeds are sown in May, for a gardener must work for the years to come as well as for the present one. It is a good plan to try to grow one biennial and one perennial every year, as two boxes of seedlings do not give you too much work. Be sure to get your seed at one of the best places, for nothing is more disappointing than to take great pains with inferior seed.
Look carefully at your Rose-trees every day this month, and remove any leaves that are curled and stuck together. Each one contains a grub, that will become a caterpillar and devour the foliage of the tree later on. Leaves that are merely curled by cold, and not stuck together, must not be picked off.
Convolvulus seed may be sown in the open this month.
June.
Many plants will now require staking. We have told you how this should be done at the end of the chapter on ‘Hardy Perennials.’ Towards the end of the month you will find the leaves of Crocuses and Snowdrops quite dead, so that you can remove them without injuring the bulbs. At the beginning of the month you can still put out bedding plants, half-hardy annuals, and biennials. A plant may be put into the open ground out of a pot at almost any time of the year. It is the safest way of transplanting in hot weather, but you must distinguish between plants that have been honestly grown in pots and those that a nurseryman has potted from boxes a day or two ago. When the soil falls away and leaves the root and stem quite bare, your plant will want care and shade as much as if you had just pulled it out of a box yourself.
Your Primroses and Auriculas should be taken up and divided this month if you wish to increase them. Let them spend the summer in a moist, shady corner of the garden. You will probably lose them all if you plant them where it is hot or dry.
July.
During this month and the next, when the soil is heated by the summer sun, you take cuttings and pipings, and make layers of the plants you wish to strike. Pinks are increased when they have done flowering, but the young shoots of the Carnation are often layered while the older shoots are still in flower.