Planting bed

“ There are now such excellent varieties of fall bearing strawberries on the market that a person can have no good excuse for not planting some in his garden. Select the ground for the bed where you will get the whole benefit from the rays of the sun. I want no trees, bushes, or tall growing plants of any kind near the bed. The farther away, the better.
The earth should be made quite rich with well rotted compost. I like the plan of preparing the bed a long time before you get ready to set your plants. You can then work the soil over, time after time, and every time kill a crop of weeds. ”

“ Beds should be well covered before the sun has left them in the afternoon, and not opened in the morning until the sun is well up. Seeds of vegetables for early planting, and those of annual flowers may be sown, and cuttings of green-house and bedding plants started in pots. Such a bed will also be a favorable place for the propagation of grape eyes, in which an experienced person will often succeed better by this humble means, than with the best designed and most conveniently arranged propagating house. ”

“ A well-spaded bed of good soil, enriched with a little well decayed manure—that from last year's hotbed will answer, or bone meal may be used or a commercial fertilizer, for the plants will30 need food at this stage of their growth, should be prepared and the frame set on this or sunk a few inches into the ground to insure warmth and prevent the ingress of small rodents which somehow show a peculiar penchant for hotbeds and cold frames and have been known to destroy a whole planting of seeds in a single night. ”

“ As regards the bed, it may be made once and for all at the time of planting, a few days being allowed for warming the soil through. But we much prefer to begin with smallish hillocks, or with a thin sharp ridge raised so as almost to touch the lights, and to plant or sow on this ridge, which can be added to from time to time as the plants require more root room. The soil, coming fresh and fresh, sustains a vigorous and healthy root action. ”

“ All cultivation can be done from the paths.
The soil for flower beds needs most careful preparation. The bed should be dug out to a depth of two feet, and if the soil is clay, two feet six inches. In the latter case, put broken stones, cinders or gravel on the bottom for drainage. The soil should be a mixture of one-half good sandy loam, one-fourth leaf mould or muck that has been left out all winter. Mix these thoroughly together before filling the beds, sprinkle wood ashes over the beds and rake them in before planting. ”

“ The next essential thing is the proper preparation of the soil for the planting of the seeds and roots. The soil must be dug deep and worked perfectly loose same as any bed in a vegetable garden. The beds are made four or five feet wide and raised four to six inches above the paths, which are left one and a half to two feet wide. I have had seed sown on the ground and covered with dirt growing beside seed planted in well made beds and the contrast in size and the thriftiness of roots are so great when seen, never to be forgotten. ”

“ The beds should run east and west, so that the sun’s rays may strike against the side of the bed. In some cases the plants are grown in equidistant rows 3 to 4 ft. apart. Where the beds are made with plants already prepared, either one-year-old or two-year-old plants may be used, for which a trench should be cut sufficient to afford room for spreading out the roots, the crowns being all kept at about 2 in. below the surface. Planting is best done in April, after the plants have started into growth. ”

“ In starting a wholly new bed, as you are doing, it is best to separate the tangled roots into small bunches, seeing to it that a few buds or "pips" remain with each, and plant in long rows a foot apart, three rows to a four-foot bed. Be sure to bury a well-tarred plank a foot in width edgewise at the outer side of the bed, unless you wish, in a couple of years' time, to have this enterprising flower walk out and about the surrounding garden and take it for its own. Be sure to press the roots in thoroughly and cover with three inches of soil. ”

“ The little plants appear in from five to seven days, and will need shade and moisture until they have become established. For beds that lie in partial shade they make beautiful borders, forming little rosettes of leaves that in the fall may be taken up and divided by pulling apart into as many plants are there are crowns; in this way one will, in a short time, secure a large bed or border. They should be protected in winter by a mulch of rough stable litter, evergreen boughs, or corn-stalks, and the bed raised to shed water. ”

“ BEDDING PLANTS By bedding plants we mean those plants that are raised in great quantities under glass, and are put out into our gardens in May. To be sure, you hear of ‘spring’ and ‘summer’ bedding, because in the autumn, when you take up your summer plants, you can fill your bed with bulbs and spring flowers, such as Stocks, Wallflowers, Primroses, and Forget-me-nots. The principal of ‘bedding’ is, you see, to plant your piece of ground, so as to have a good display twice a year. Every autumn you throw away your summer plants, and every summer you throw away your spring ones. ”

“ But let no one persuade us that the newly planted beds would look better if raked smooth instead of being left quite rough. A smooth rose bed means that the soil cakes hard, preventing the rain penetrating in summer, and the frost mellowing the ground in winter. And from early spring to late autumn the hoe should be kept constantly at work between the plants; not merely to keep down weeds, but to keep the surface of the ground open to the influences of rain, sun, and the watering-pot. ”

“ Some delight in shade, others in sunshine; some are pleased with a cool, clay bed, while others are never so comfortable as in a sandy soil, or burning sun. The seed, too, is so cheap [Pg 40] as to be within the reach of all, while a good collection of bedding plants would not come within the resources of many, and yet very few beds filled with expensive bedding plants look as well as a good bed of our best annuals, like Phlox, Petunia, or Portulaca, and for a vase or basket many of our annuals are unsurpassed. ”

“ In stubborn, heavy soil the best method to pursue in making a permanent bed is to throw out all the dirt from the trench and replace with good, fibrous loam.
In setting, 1-year-old plants will prove more satisfactory than older ones, being less liable to suffer from injury to the root system than those that have made a larger growth. Two years after setting the crop may be cut somewhat, but not sooner if a lasting bed is desired, as the effort to replace the stalks has a tendency to weaken the plant unless the roots are well established. ”

“ With some help I have completed the little flower beds, which I intend to be so pretty next spring—they are intermixed with grass-plots, and are made up of good, fresh earth, properly prepared for the plants they are to contain. Mary, who seems to have a great deal of knowledge, has assisted me—for I find that much of the art of gardening consists in suiting the soil to the nature of the plants. In my jonquil bed, she advised me to put abundance of sand, and no manure. ”

“ As a general thing, for the ordinary home garden a bed three feet by twelve is sufficient, but the added expense of a few additional feet is so slight and the use of a bed so appeals to one once one realizes its convenience, that it is seldom a mistake to make it too large as, aside from the sowing of seed, it may be used for starting roots of bedding plants, cannas, dahlias, begonias, tuberoses, caladiums ”

“ I don’t see how one can get along well without it, or without a short hand-rake. But I wanted to read what it says about making the garden beds. That is why I began reading it to-night.”
“It says the bed should be three feet wide by twelve long,” read Natalie.
“Yes, I see; but I have found three feet of soil to be uncomfortably wide to reach over when you wish to weed or dig about the plants. If the vegetables are bush-beans it is almost impossible to work in the middle of the bed without rubbing against the outside plants and breaking off branches. ”

“ The beauty of a formal bed in the center of the lawn is destroyed if some of the plants are injured or do not develop. Symmetry is part of its merit. If, however, the bed is along the border, a few vacant places in the bed do not attract great attention. In school grounds it is well to have the beds somewhat near together or continuous, in order that the labor of taking care of them may be less.
It is always well to plant profusely. Much of the beauty of a flower-bed lies in an abundance of color. One must consider, also, that some of the roots, seeds, or bulbs may fail. ”

“ Do we want a successful flower bed—one that our neighbors will envy—or one in which the plants are struggling to exist? If we want the former—and who does not?—we must give our plants good pasturage. They are as fond of the fat of the land as we are, and, since they gladden our hearts with their radiant blooms, we should treat them fairly. And how? By giving them a good, deep soil for their root-run, not only rich in food, but loose and friable. ”

“ Beds of perennials, Roses, bulbs, and especially of Lilies and Peonies, must be well rounded up to shed water, as all plants are injured by water standing about their roots. If not already high enough to admit of this, more earth must be added to raise them sufficiently. The earth from the window-boxes may be used to advantage, especially for the Tea-rose bed, where a foot of mellow earth, brought well up around the plants and rounded to shed water, will so protect them that, though the tops may freeze, all below the soil will be likely to live. ”

“ The earth encasing the roots sustained the plants during transportation and after setting sufficiently to prevent any loss worth mentioning. This method of the plant-grower can easily be employed on the Home Acre. Pots filled with earth may be sunk along the strawberry rows in the garden, the runners made to root in them, and from them transferred to any part of the garden wherein we propose to make a new bed. It is only a neater and more certain way of removing young plants with a ball of earth from the open bed. ”

“ June 21. The rosary has been duly surveyed, staked according to the plan, and the border lines fixed with the garden line dipped in whitewash, so that if we only plant a bed at a time, our ambition will always be before us. But as yet no man cometh to dig. This process is of greater import than it may seem, because with the vigorous three-year-old sod thus obtained do we purpose to turf the edges of the beds for hardy and summer flowers that border the squares of the vegetable garden. ”

“ The strawberry bed will be a ruin, the vegetable garden will be yellow with charlock and creeping buttercup, and white with sheep's parsley, and scarlet with poppies, and the flower-beds will be a forlorn picture of rank growths. It is a familiar saying of the gardener that one year's seeds means ten years' weeds, and it is certainly a slow business to redeem soil that has once lapsed into foulness. ”

“ A bed may be formed any time of the year, but the usual custom is to prepare it so as to be ready to cut, say, in the fall, for the first time. Take a pan or shallow box and sow the seed any time during the winter before March. When well up, so they can be handled, transplant into small pots, and from these shift into larger, say to three or four inch pots. Keep the shoots pinched back so as to form a stout, bushy plant. During winter they will require an artificial temperature of not less than 50 degrees. ”

“ You get a bed quicker by using plants that are two years old, and of course there are some plants better than others. I bought my plants in the east. Now they have good plants here, a good many of them, too, but I have never seen anything as good as I got for my last bed. The best way if I was going into it, being a market gardener, would be to go to some neighbor that had a good straight bed and get my own seed. It is very easy to save, and most anyone would give a man all he wanted and charge him nothing. ”

“ Each bed is large enough to have several pink and white blossomed fruit trees and some gooseberry bushes. Amongst them are planted spring-flowering bulbs such as narcissus, tulips, etc., for cutting. Other beds have smaller fruit trees, or currant bushes and roses alternate. The dark red-green foliage of the rose bushes contrasts with the fresh green of other plants. A few plots are reserved for vegetables, but, as a rule, these are close to a border of flowers; therefore, the garden, although small, is ornamental as well as useful. ”

“ I had a very fine bed four years ago, and when frost set in was loth to lose them. I dug them up, cut them down, shook the earth from the roots and hung them up in the cellar all winter, and not one grew the following spring. I tried the same method next fall, but did not cut them down until spring, the same results followed, not one grew. Last fall I dug my bed up with as much earth as possible, put them in boxes, gave them winter quarters in the cellar, gave them a little water now and then. ”

“ Even these can be improved by a broad edging of grass to every bed. Herbaceous borders are delightful; we cannot live without them, but we do want beds too, they are so brilliant, so useful, and so well-behaved. “Bedders” are the good children of the garden, herbaceous plants the wayward. To manage them is like playing a game of croquet with Wonderland Alice’s [Pg 79] live flamingoes for hoops and mallets; the plants have the same habit of taking their way, not ours, and this puts us more than ever in conceit with our little plots of green enamel, set with coloured flowers like jewels. ”