PANSIES AND VIOLAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1940, Page 8

PANSIES AND VIOLAS

POPULAR GARDEN PLANTS. Pansies and violas are most popular garden plants, specially suitable for edging and carpeting rose beds and borders, and for rock gardens where colour is the main thing. The soil and cultivation given to the roses suit them

very well. They come into flower long before the roses, and fall off a bit during the summer unless the old flowers are picked off regularly and they are watered weil during dry weather. They commence to flower again in the autumn, and continue more or loss all winter.

It has often been asked what is the difference between a pansy and a viola. With modern varieties the difference is very slight, for the size and shape of the exhibition and bedding violas have brought them well up to the pansies. There is a difference in origin, the pansy being worked up from the ordinary viola tricolour found growing in cultivated fields in England and the viola is a hybrid between the pansy and an alpine species, the horned viola. Viola cornuta. The pansy proper has large circular flowers with overlopping velvety petals and robust foliage. The vialos are usually longer in shape; their colours are either selfs or two or more colours, and are more dainty and delicate shades than pansies, which are either selfs or are blotched or margin l ed with very rich colours. The violas are more tufted in habit; in fact, there has been a tendency in recent years, to drop the name viola altogether and call them tufted pansies. Both pansies: and violas are easily raised from seed, which is now so carefully selected that the seedlings come almost true, but to be certain of a snecial variety it ir. better to propagate them by cuttings. | When seed is sown in the sprint along with the half-hardy beddint plants and the seedlings planted out ir nursery rows, the best varieties car be increased by means of cuttings, pul in now.

The correct cuttings are those which arise at the base of the flowering stems, but which have not flowered. These are nearly, if not quite, solid, they are usually about throe inches in length, and in some cases have already started to form new roots when removed from the parent plant. These are prepared for insertion, by cutting them across immediately below a node or joint, but if they are not too long and have already formed bits of young roots there is no need to cut these off. The cuttings should not be allowed to wilt, and when taken off they should be labelled and wrapped up in a piece of wet scrim, and when made they should be kept in a cool, damp place or covered with damp moss until put in.

The soil is the usual cutting mixture one part clean loam, one part sifted leafmould and one part sharp sand. They can be rooted in boxes, or if few of a variety, in four-inch pots, or in a specially prepared bed outside. This bed is made up by first excavating the soil to a depth of a foot, then putting in six inches of clinkers, or brickbats, and over this some fine scrub or turves with the grass side downwards. On this place six inches of the special cutting mixture, making it firm and level on top. Finish of! with a layer cf clean sharp sand. As it is most important that the cutting be prevented from wilting, and that they receive some protection until they are rooted, a framework should be rigged up about 18 inches above the bed and then some thin scrim be tack-

ed on it. The cuttings are dibbled in firmly with a propagating peg. in rows two inches apart, the cuttings being from one inch and a-half to two inches apart in the rows. Water well and shade with scrim at once. It should be tacked on firmly to the framework as soon as all the cuttings are in. and it need not be removed until growth commences in the spring. The cutting beds can be made up in a cold frame and sashes put on or they can be put into boxes and these put out in a cool, shady, cold frame.

As a ride, it is quite easy to get 100 per cent to root, and these develop into nice plants, ready to put out as soon as weather conditions are favourable in the spring.