The first leaves that appear on most plants are called the seed-leaves. If your plants are comfortable, but a few days will pass before true leaves develop. You will find the latter very different from the seed-leaves. Before the first or seed-leaves appear it is not important that your farms have the strong sunlight. In fact I always put my egg-shell farms in the shade while the seeds are germinating, but at the first peep of a leaf or stem I put them in the full sunshine.
Most of you will no doubt have your farms on the window ledge. Among the first things you will observe is a way all the leaves have of looking out of doors. If you turn your farms around so the leaves are looking in the room, the time will not be long before all of them will be faced out of doors again. Once on a time one of my Junior Naturalists told me that plants take to sunshine as a duck does to water. A duck is never so comfortable as when in water; and I am certain that sunshine is important to the comfort of most plants. Some of my nephews and nieces will understand why light is so necessary to plants, for I have spoken of this before.
I hope you will this moment decide to have some egg-shell farms, and sow some seed immediately after getting your soil. Later, when the plants are large enough to plant in the open ground, we will talk of what is best to do with them. In Leaflet LII you will find a picture of an egg-shell farm.
LEAFLET LXXVIII.
BULBS.[99]
By JOHN W. SPENCER.
A BULB GARDEN.
- "It's rather dark in the earth to-day,"
- Said one little bulb to his brother;
- "But I thought that I felt a sunbeam ray—
- We must strive and grow till we find the way?"
- And they nestled close to each other.
- Then they struggled and toiled by day and by night
- Till two little snowdrops in green and white,
- Rose out of the darkness and into the light,
- And softly kissed one another. —Boston Journal.
To succeed with the cultivation of flowers, the first thing to have in mind is to make the plant comfortable. This condition should be not only the first thought, but also the last thought. If you can do this successfully, the plant will do the rest of the work and your results will be abundant.
What plant comfort is, is a question more easily suggested than answered, for it is a very large subject—about as large as the surface of the earth. As a venture we will say that there are as many different kinds of plants as there are people. It is at least safe to say that plants have as many different notions as to their conditions of life as have the people of the different nations and tribes of the world.