Gardening Indoors and Under Glass | Page 5

the most difficult thing to
regulate and maintain in growing plants in the house. There is, however,
at least one room in almost every house where the night temperature
does not often go below forty-five or fifty degrees, and if necessary all
plants may be collected into one room during very cold weather.
Another precaution which will often save them is to move them away
from the windows; put sheets of newspaper inside the panes, not,
however, touching the glass, as a "dead air space" must be left between.
Where there is danger of freezing, a kerosene lamp or stove left burning
in the room overnight will save them. Never, when the temperature
outside is below freezing, should plants be left where leaves or
blossoms may touch the glass.
As with the problem of light, so with that of temperature--the specially
designed place for plants, no matter how small or simple a little nook it
may be, offers greater facility for furnishing the proper conditions. But
it is, of course, not imperative, and as I have said, there is probably not
one home in twenty where a number of sorts of plants cannot be safely
carried through the winter.
MOISTURE
It would seem, at first thought, that the proper condition of moisture
could be furnished as easily in the house as anywhere. And so it can be
as far as applying water to the soil is concerned; but the air in most
dwellings in winter is terribly deficient in moisture. The fact that a

room is so dry that plants cannot live in it should sound a warning to us
who practically live there for days at a time, but it does not, and we
continue to contract all sorts of nose and throat troubles, to say nothing
of more serious diseases. No room too dry for plants to live in is fit for
people to live in. Hot-air and steam heating systems especially, produce
an over-dry condition of the atmosphere. This can be overcome to a
great or complete extent by thorough ventilation and by keeping water
constantly where it can evaporate; over radiators, etc. This should be
done for the sake of your own health, if not for that of the plant.
Further information as to watering and ventilation will be found in
Chapter VII
(page 45), but before we get anxious about just how to take care of
plants we must know how to get them, and before getting them we
must know what to give them to grow in--the plant's foundation. So for
a little we must be content with those prosaic but altogether essential
matters of soil, manures and fertilizers, which in the next chapter I shall
try to make clear in as brief manner as possible.
CHAPTER III
SOILS, MANURES AND FERTILIZERS
The soil must furnish the whole foundation of plant life. For centuries
those who have grown things have realized the vital importance of
having the soil rich or well supplied with plant food; and if this is
important in growing plants in the field or flower garden, where each
vegetable or flower has from one to several cubic feet of earth in which
to grow, how imperative it is to have rich soil in a pot or plant box
where each plant may have but a few cubic inches!
But the trouble is not so much in knowing that plants should be given
rich soil, as to know how to furnish it. I well remember my first attempt
at making soil rich and thinking how I would surprise my grandmother,
who worked about her plants in pots every day of her life, and still did

not have them as big as they grew in the flower garden. I had seen the
hired man put fertilizer on the garden. That was the secret! So I got a
wooden box about two-thirds full of mellow garden earth, and filled
most of the remaining space with fertilizer, well mixed into the soil, as
I had seen him fix it. I remember that my anxiety was not that I get too
much fertilizer in the soil, but that I would take so much out of the bag
that it would be missed. Great indeed was my chagrin and
disappointment, twelve hours after carefully setting out and watering
my would-be prize plants, to notice that they had perceptibly turned
yellow and wilted. And I certainly had made the soil rich.
So the problem is by no means as simple as might at first be supposed.
Not only must sufficient plant food be added to the soil but it must be
in certain forms, and neither too much nor too little may be given if the
best results are to be attained.
Now it is a fact established beyond all