Your Flowers From Seeds

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 280, 26 November 1938, Page 14 (Supplement)

Your Flowers From Seeds

THE time and method of sowing flower seeds must be regulated by their natures. Seeds of tender plants are usually sown in pots or pans and placed on a moderate hotbed or in a propagating house early in spring, and in this case the plants have greenhouse cultivation until the time arrives for hardening them off preparatory to final planting.

Seeds of many hardy flowers may be treated in the same way when a long season of growth is necessary for their development. Phlox, verbenas and hollyhocks—plants that differ immensely in habit and constitution—may be sown in August and put side by side in the same pit or vinery, or in the warmest corner of any greenhouse. The same treatment will suit them equally well.

Soil fthould be principally loam and sand, with well-rotted manure from a hotbed or compost heap. Light, air and

moisture must be regulated with a view to ensuring a free, vigorous growth from the first, with the least possible amount of artificial heat.

Sometimes the sowing should be deferred to September or October. The result will be far more satisfactory than growth made under the stimulus of artificial heat earlier in the season.

However, the plants must always have sufficient time, for, although the rapid system has been developed, the constitution of the plants remains unchanged and those which have been classed as biennials and perennials need a long season when treated as annuals. '

Many of the finest flowers may be raised from seed by the aid of frame and a little careful management. Take as an example a restricted garden. Here is a small frame and some packets of seed. It is the month of August or September.

Pans and pots are made ready with sweet, sandy comj>ost and the seeds are sown and labelled. Pots and pans are packed together in the frame on a bed of clean coal ashes, slates, tiles or brick, laid on the soil to promote

■warmth and cleanliness and to prevent intrusion of worms.

Bv simple management, almost as quick a growth of seeds can be ensured in this frame as with the aid of a hotbed. The secret consists in careful storage of the sun's heat. Lay over the seed pans sheets of glass to prevent evaporation, and let sunshine full upon them. Be careful as to moisture; they must never be wet, nor dry; water miKt not be slopped about carelessly. It is a good rule to immerse the pots and pans in "soft" water, slightly tepid. When the seedlings begin to appear, give them a little air and lay sheets of paper over them when the sun is shining brightly.

A few old mats or liplit loppings of trees laid over the frame from sundown to sunrise will be sufficient protection.

Turning to large gardens, it will be obvious that the advantages of transference of labour from the old system to the new are immense. To gardeners the advantages are of importance; the propagation of bedders by cuttings and of florists' flowers by suckers, divisions, layers and pipings, will not be completely abolished. For ordinary purposes the ends in view may be accomplished more simply, expeditiously and cheaply than before. Pits appropriated to bedclers and the like may be liberated; there will be no difficulty in finding for them more profitable occupants.