Pansies And Violas . . .

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29725, 19 January 1962, Page 6

Pansies And Violas . . .

For spring displays, and onwards, pansies and violas take a lot of beating. Their bright and cheerful colours and their floriferous nature endear them to everyone. Seed raising is readily carried out, and plants raised from seed sown now will be fit to plant out in the autumn, ready for spring display. Plants may also be raised from cuttings taken in late summer or early autumn, but this is a much less common practice unless you are enthusiastic about the charms of a particular form. Commercial nurserymen use the method, however. The difference between a pansy and viola is not particularly easy to define. Generally, a viola is of a more compact habit and usually smaller in the flower, and the markings which help to form the “face” in a pansy are not found in a viola. In the old days an immense amount of breeding work was carried out on these plants. It is even recorded that there were 400 named varieties of pansy on sale in Britain, by 1835. Today, however, the selected strains of the seedsman have replaced this immense variety. Choose an area for seed sowing which is not liable to dry out, nor exposed to hot and dry conditions. Prepare it for sowing by digging well, and breaking the surface down as fine as possible. Draw your drills quite shallowly about a foot apart and sow the seed as thinly as possible. Make sure the soil does not dry out, or germination cannot be expected. When the seedlings become reasonably large they may be planted out in other cool parts of the garden to bulk up in size awaiting April or May transplanting, or they may be thinned in the seedbed to about 12 inches apart if you require only a limited quantity. If you have a greenhouse and miss this seed sowing, it is possible to catch up by sowing seed in boxes in your glasshouse in mid-March, and plant out in early spring instead of autumn.

Propagating pansies and violas from cuttings is easy, as long as you remember one vital point. The only really suitable type of shoot for propagation is one which has not yet produced flowers. Shoots which have flowered are totally useless, while strong, vigorous shoots take a long time to root. The best method is to select the plants you want as parents early in the year. Then cut them back, so that they produce a tuft of young growth. It is this tuft of young growth which will produce the best cutting material. If cuttings are inserted in a cold frame in a shady spot, or even on the shady aide of a border, they will root fairly quickly. Do hot allow the soil around the base of the cutting to be loose, however. Cuttings inserted now will be well rooted by the autumn and fit to transfer to their planting-out positions in the garden.