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قراءة كتاب ABC of Gardening
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covered with them. It will look as if a fall of snow had tried to hide it. I consider this one of our very best flowering vines. Unlike the hybrid members of the clematis family, with their enormous flowers of rich colors and scanty foliage, it is perfectly healthy, and it has ample foliage to make a charming background for its blossoms.
The trumpet honeysuckle is a favorite wherever grown. It is one of our best vines for porch use, as it does not climb to a great height. It bears its scarlet-and-orange flowers throughout the entire season. It is an especial favorite because its foliage is always clean and seldom attacked by insects.
The good old morning-glory is, all things considered, our best annual flowering vine. It grows rapidly, reaching to the windows of the second story by midsummer. It is a free and constant bloomer. It is excelled by no other vine in richness and variety of color—white, pink, purple, blue, violet, and crimson flowers will make a veritable "morning glory" of it. Care should be taken to provide it with stout cord to climb by. A light twine is not strong enough to support the weight of its heavy vines.
Another good flowering vine is the hyacinth bean. Why it should be given this name I do not know, as there is nothing about it suggestive in the remotest degree of the hyacinth. Its flowers are a brilliant scarlet. It seldom grows to a greater height than seven or eight feet, and is therefore well adapted to use about porches where a rampant grower is not wanted.
The wild cucumber, catalogued as echynocystis, is a good vine for covering tall buildings and screens. It will make a growth of twenty-five or thirty feet in a season. Its foliage is pretty, as are its white flowers, which make the vines look as if covered with foam. These give place to prickly fruit, somewhat resembling some varieties of cucumber, hence its popular name.
The wild grape that is found growing along creeks and rivers in almost all parts of the country is a most excellent vine for covering summer-houses and for planting where it can have trees to clamber over. Its flowers are so small and so pale in color as to be scarcely distinguishable, but they are so delightfully fragrant that every one knows when the vine is in bloom without looking at it. Its fragrance has much of the pervading quality that characterizes mignonette, and is quite unlike that of any other plants I can call to mind. It seems to have the very spirit of the spring in it—vague, elusive, and sweet beyond description.
I would not class the crimson-rambler rose among the vines, though the majority of our florists have done so. I treat it as a shrub, and find it most satisfactory when grown in that manner. I allow the young canes to reach a length of seven or eight feet. Then I nip off the tops of them. This causes side branches to develop. A central support is provided for these branches. In this way I succeed in getting flowers all over the plant—in other words, of making it a shrub instead of a vine. If it is used to cover summer-houses, the canes can be allowed to grow to suit themselves.
Celastrus scandens, more commonly known as bittersweet, is a native vine that can easily be domesticated. It is well worth a place about every home. Its foliage is bright and clean, its flowers inconspicuous, but its fruit makes the vine a favorite wherever grown. This is a bright crimson, each berry being inclosed in an orange shell which splits apart in three pieces, revealing the fruit inside. As this fruit remains on the plant until late in the season, it makes the vine quite as attractive as if it were covered with flowers at a time of the year when bits of brightness are greatly appreciated in the garden.
VI
SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN
There will be a good deal of work to do in the garden, no matter how small it is.
A good deal of this work will consist in cleaning up and removing rubbish, unless attention was given to this in the fall. The tops of last year's perennials should be cut away close to the ground, and dead annuals should be pulled up and added to the refuse-heap.
If a covering was provided for your plants, it should be removed altogether or dug into the soil about the roots of the plants it protected. Never allow it to remain upon the ground about the plants unless it is of a kind that is not particularly noticeable.
This should not be done, however, until the season is so far advanced that all danger of severe freezing is over. A plant that has had winter protection will not be in as good condition to resist the effect of severe cold as it would have been if that protection had not been given it. Therefore do not be in that haste which may result in waste. Rome wasn't built in a day, and spring isn't confined to a week. There will be plenty of time for uncovering plants when the weather will justify it.
The bulb-bed should not have its covering taken off until you are quite sure that the weather will not be severe enough to injure the tender plants just peeping through the soil. Of course one cannot be quite sure when it is safe to do this, as our Northern seasons are subject to frequent and sometimes severe relapses. But if we keep an eye on the weather we can generally tell when uncovering is advisable. If, after the beds have been uncovered, a cold spell happens along and there seems to be danger in the air, spread blankets, old carpeting, or something of a similar nature over them. But before doing this drive pegs into the ground for the covering to rest on. Its weight should not be allowed to fall upon the young shoots, which will be so tender at this period as to be easily broken.
Go through the garden with a view to finding what changes can be made advantageously. We often make sad mistakes in the location of our plants, and do not discover them until it is too late to unmake them that season. Sometimes a plant that has got into the wrong place so disappoints us that we think of throwing it out, but if we give it a place where its merits have an opportunity to assert themselves properly it turns out to be extremely satisfactory. The aim should be to get every plant into the place just suited to its peculiarities. It may take several seasons to bring about so desirable a result, but something along this line should be part of every season's work.
Old clumps of perennials will be greatly benefited by a division of their roots about once in three years. Take them up, cut their roots apart, discard all but the youngest and strongest ones, and reset in a soil that has been made rich and mellow.
Shrubs should be looked over with a view to doing whatever pruning may seem necessary. I do not advise much pruning, however. A shrub knows better than I do what shape to grow in to be most effective, and I prefer to let it train itself. About all the pruning I do is to cut away weak wood and to thin out the branches if there seems too many of them.
Early-flowering shrubs should never be pruned until after their flowering period is over.
Manure should be applied to all plants each spring. The older it is the better if you procure it from the barn-yard. On no account should fresh manure be used. Spread your fertilizer out about the plants, and then work it into the soil with spade or hoe.
You will doubtless find many seedling plants in the beds where they germinated last fall. These should be transplanted to places where they are to bloom as early in the spring as possible. All perennials that got a start last