Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1876 — A Garden Extraordinary. [ARTICLE]

A Garden Extraordinary.

Onb of our considerable seed firms in arranging their stock for last spring’s business, laid aside a large quantity of flower seeds which remained over after the previous years’ business. Unwilling to sell seed of doubtful vitality, the following plan was hit upon for a disposal of it which should promise an unusual if not a profitable return. The article is published in the American Garden , and we give as much of it as our space permits: “We plowed a strip about six feet wide all around a five-acre field, close to the fence. On this plowed ground the seed—previously well-mixed—was thrown, iust as it happened to come. The surface having, afterward, been smoothed over, we waited the result. This proved more than satisfactory. We had a wild garden indeed! The plants came up as thickly as they could grow, and flourished and blossomed as freely as though they had enjoyed all the care usually given to delicate hot-house exotics. Sweet Alyssum, Mignonette, Phlox Drummondi, seemed to cover the ground. Morning Glories of every shade, and delicate Cypress vines, tried to cover the fences and run up eveiy tree. Quaint little yellow and green Gourds appeared in the most unexpected places, and the whole bed seemed in a blaze with the brilliant Eschscholtzia, Marigolds and Zinnias. “ Every morning would find some new and unexpected flower in bloom. In short, the place was a constant delight all -summer to each member-ot the family, as also to the neighbors. The children, especially, who reveled in a garden where they were allowed to pick whatever they pleased, were never tired of the excitement of hunting for something new. “A quantity of the same seed was sown in the adjacent woods. Many of these germinated—and the sight of Morning Glories running up the trees in the wildest part of the woods, and bunches of Balsam and Zinnias and Asters looking up through the underbrush was, indeed, passing strange and promotive of intense enjoyment.” Those who putter over the planting of such seeds in pans mid frames, may learn a lesson from the above rough and ready treatment.— Rural New Yorker.