PANSY

Viola tricolor. Hardy perennial



The popularity of this flower has been greatly extended and the culture

simplified since it became the practice to raise the required number of

plants every year from seed. For all ordinary purposes the trouble of

striking cuttings and keeping stocks in pots through the winter is mere

waste of labour and pit-room. The Pansy is a little fastidious, but not

severely so. It thrives in a cool climate, with partial shade in high

summer, and in a rich, moist, sandy soil. Notwithstanding all this, the

Pansy will grow almost anywhere and anyhow; but as fine flowers of this

old favourite are highly prized, the plant should be treated with

reasonable care to do justice to its great merits.



A thick sowing is very liable to damp off: therefore sow thinly, either

in pots or boxes, in February and March. The thin sowing, moreover,

renders it possible to take out the forward plants without disturbing

the remainder. In due course transplant into pans or boxes of good soil,

and place in some cool spot where the plants may gradually harden off.

When they have become stocky, remove to beds or borders, with balls of

earth attached to the roots. Should the surrounding soil become set by

heavy rain or by watering, a slight stirring of the surface will prove

beneficial.



Seed sown in the open ground during the summer months will readily

germinate, and the seedlings need no attention beyond thinning to about

six inches apart until they are ready for transferring to their proper

positions, where they will produce a mass of bloom in the following

spring.



The Pansy puts forth its buds very early in the year. Whether they are

particularly tasty, or the scarcity of young vegetable growth gives them

undue prominence, we know not, but certain it is that sparrows show a

marked partiality for them. And having once acquired a taste for the

buds, these impudent marauders will not leave them alone; they evidently

regard Pansies as the perfection of a winter salad. Their depredations

can be prevented by an application of water flavoured with quassia or

paraffin oil, which must be repeated after rain.