spring – School for Housewives

This is the second article in January of the School for Housewives 1909 series published on January 10, 1909, and is an article on planting.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Planting Bulbs for Easter

It is a long look ahead for our amateur florist. Every anniversary falls into our lives like a surprise, no matter how long and how carefully we have prepare for it. Easier—the movable feast—seems to require less preparation at the hands of the housemother than the winter holidays.

Yet it behooves those of us who love flowers well enough to take the trouble to cultivate them to lay our plans now for filling our homes with beauty and fragrance on the most joyous festival of the year.

In our Easter talk (if it please the Lord of Life to keep us here and together until then) we will hold sweet converse as to the glorious promise symbolized in each opening bud. Today we address ourselves to homely details, without which we may not expect leaf or flower.

It sounds strange to the ears of country-bred readers to be told that it is not an easy matter to get heath for house plants in winter. For them there is always a corner of the barnyard where a few strokes of the spade will break through ice and snow down into loose soil, black, rich and warm. Our flat-dweller must buy earth for filling flower pots and jardinieres. It will be brought to her in a stout paper parcel, as if it where so much moist sugar. Even then the business of filling pots and boxes with dirt in the bathroom or kitchen is not a pleasant task. It is a relief in such circumstances to recollect that spring flowers may be brought into healthy bloom by substituting water for soil.

Easy to Grow.

Hyacinths take obligingly to this method of window gardening. If you have fruit jars that are not too wide at the mouth to support large-sized bulbs above the surface of the water, you need not go to the expense of hyacinth glasses. The latter are not costly, however, and make a better show in the window than the homelier substitute. Select some blubs of uniform size; fill the glasses with pure water and set the bulb in the mouth so that the bottom rests in the liquid. To submerge would rot it and ruin all. Be sure that the circle containing the foot-gterms is under water, and examine every few days to see that evaporation has not expose the same. When the bulbs are thus arranged set the glasses in the cellar, if you have one; if not, in a dark, rather cool closet.

All this while the water must be kept at the right level. Replenish the supply gingerly from above, stirring the blubs as little as possible, and with water suited to the temperature, of the place in which the plants are kept. Cold would check the growth temporarily.

Once in the sunlight, your nurselings require little more attention. See that water is added before the roots begin to dry out and turn the glasses daily, that the light may visit all parts of the plants impartially, and you will not have to wait long for satisfactory flowering.

Narcissus and jonquils may be brought to blossoming in water, but under different treatment. Have ready enough clean pebbles or broken bits of marble, picked up at a stonecutter’s, to half fill a wide, rather shallow bowl. Dispose the bulbs judiciously among these, so that they will not crowd one another, and that all will stand firmly upright. This done, pour in water until the root central circles are well covered. Lay a piece of lace set over the top of the bowl, fastening it at the bottom, that it may not dip into the yater. This will keep the inevitable dust from coasting and befouling it. Now, put the bowl away in the cellar or closet, as I have directed you to proceed with the hyacinths, and follow these directions exactly in further treatment until the sprouting bulbs are sufficiently advanced to be set in the window. When there they must have sunlight for several hours of each day. Reflected sunshine will not induce blossoming. Replenish the supply of water as it sink below the level in evaporating.

A Water Plant.

The Chinese sacred lily grows better in water than in earth. Indeed, the only experiment I ever made in cultivating them in the latter direction was unfortunate in result. I had brought the comparatively new plants to such beautiful perfection in water, that I reasoned in favor of setting them in the bosom of their mother earth. I knew that hyacinths, tulips, narcissus, freesias, jonquils, etc., accepted water as a makeshift for the nourishing soil. Why should the celestial bulbs be of a different mind? Therefore, I planted them in a box of rich garden mould; left them in the cellar for the prescribed four weeks, brought them by prudent stages into the light, and awaited developments in sanguine calmness. The leaves grew rapidly and rankly, and never a single bloom blessed my sight the season through. Next winter I meekly set the blubs between the pebbles, as of old, and took no risks.

If you can get a china jardinière—an oblong box made for the window garden—it will be more slightly than the bowl, and accommodate itself more gracefully to the dimensions and shape of the shelf which is the improvised conservatory of hundred of thousands of flower lovers.

For those who are poor (or rich) enough to command all the garden and forest mold they want, I add a few simple rules for the cultivation of Easter bulbs. Set those I have named in earth, instead of in water (always excepting the Chinese specimen!) Fill with soil that covers the bulb. Not too deep, as that will give the leaves unnecessary trouble in reaching the light. Half an inch of earth is sufficient to shield the upper part of the bulb from dust and draughts.

The upper stratum should be crumbled fine, and laid in loosely. Keep the pots in the cellar or dark closet until the shoots above the surface are from wo to three inches in height, then bring them gradually to the sunlight. During the weeks of seclusion, water sparingly—not oftener than once a week; and not then unless the earth is dry to the tip of the finger thrust three inches into the mold. The philosophy of this is clear—what you want to accomplish by darkness and quiet is vigorous root growth. The fibers which are to draw nutriment through the sap for the growing plant must strike deeply into the earth in order to extract it. If the surface be kept wet, the rootlets are attracted to the top of the earth, making what we know as “lateral roots,” which depend entirely upon frequent watering and get little sustenance from the soil below.

Calla lilies (which botanists tell us, are not lilies at all, but “Richardia Africana”) require larger pots than do the bulbous plan e have already spoken of. They, too, must be set in the dark until the roots have taken hold of the lower soil and the green blades appear above ground. I have seen them growing in artificial ponds, the bulbs having been set among stones. I think, however, that they must have a foundation of earth to bring them into vigorous growth. I have raised them successfully in flower pots and jardinieres. They hold their bloom longer than they hyacinths and jonquils and have a stately grace that peculiarly adapts them for Easer decorations.

Marion Harland

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School for Housewives – Spring Housecleaning

An Expert’s Advise on the Most Important of Subjects

Readers will find in another section of this page – in the “Housemothers’ Exchange” – a helpful note from an experiences homemaker which might be headed “The Week Before Housecleaning.”

Referring to one branch of her subject, let me emphasize her exhortation to clean decks for action before settling down to business. Where rubbish comes from in orderly careful families is a mystery past finding out. TO quote from sapient George Sampson in “Our Mutual Friend” “We all know it’s there!” There in quantities that amaze and shame us! Things that are of no earthly – or unearthly – use to us now, and which are not likely to be of us to us ever hereafter – yet too good to throw away – all that is superfluous is rubbish! Give yourself the benefit of the doubt and let them go; the old coat which John has fattened out of; the stained gown you cannot clean or make over; battered toys; reports of patent offices and orphan asylums and quack medicines; letters whose end is to be burned sooner or later; broken plates and cracked tumblers and leaky kettles – extract them from pantry, wardrobe and attic before you begin to scrub and polish – and get them out of the house at once and for all time. Set abut housecleaning on Wednesday, when washing and ironing are out of the way, and begin in the attic – if, as our wise “Grandma” put it, you have one If should have been swept and dusted on Saturday. Scrub woodwork and windows before touching the floor, having first of all brushed down the walls with a peticoated broom. For paint, use a firm, not harsh, brush, sapolio and suds, afterward wiping with a dry cloth. Stir a little kerosene into the water used for the windows, beginning with the uppermost panes, cleaning one at a time and wiping it dry before proceeding to another. Polish with newspaper, rubbed soft between the hands. If properly applied it lends a luster nothing else imparts.

GUARD AGAINST FIRE

After the scouring is done, move boxes, barrel, and trunks invalided chairs and unused bedding into the middle of the garret. Have ready a gallon of gasoline into which were stirred two days ago three ounces of gum camphor, broken small. Keep this mixture in a can with a tight top. With a large syringe, used for this purpose alone, inject this into every crack, around baseboards of the floor. Spray the edges and tufts of mattresses, and do not overlook old furniture. Shut the place up and leave it for twenty-four hours before airing it. Enter, then, without a light, and let not so much as a match be struck in the room until the windows have been opened.

If you have no attic, observe the same precautions against moths and other insect life in cleaning the trunk room or closets where are stored articles not in frequent use. The odor of camphor will soon pass away, and that of gasoline almost as quickly as it evaporates. If there directions be faithfully followed, the danger of summer visitation from nocturnal marauders – “red rovers,” roaches and even mosquitos – will be greatly lessened. The powerful antiseptic kills their eggs with those of moths.

KEEP COMFORTABLE

Go about the work in hand diligently, by systematically, and do not make unwise haste to get it done. Take one room at a time, working steadily downward if you live in a cottage. If John be away all day, content yourself and co-laborers with a cold luncheon, enlivened by a cup of tea or chocolate, at noon. Contrive to have a hot breakfast for him before he goes away in the morning and a hot dinner at night. Make soup in advance for several days, warming it each evening, and study economy of labor in other culinary tasks. By finishing each room before you attack the next, you will never be turned out of your living rooms. A little ingenuity in this respect will life much of the odium from housecleaning justly dreaded by masculine mankind. The average John, having enacted the role of seeking dove for ix nights in returning from the waste of his working world to the domestic ark, is but human if her elect to pay raven on the seventh, and tries his luck abroad.

Set steadfastly before you the purpose of making your quarter comfortable in spite of the semi-annual upheaval and resist, as an unlawful temptation, the disposition to overtire yourself and disgust everybody about you by making a point of “finishing up” by Saturday night. The world will be none the worse if a room or two be left over for next Wednesday.

One part of the formidable job will require nice calculation and adroit management. I refer to the “treatment” of your hardwood floors. After forty years’ experience with these, I have come to the deliberate conclusion that the one and only satisfactory way to keep them in order is to put them into the hands of “the profession.” They must not be touched until the rest of the cleaning is done. Wash off the dust overnight, have your household astir betimes next morning, bed made, etc., s that they men engaged to “Treat” the floors may get at them early. If they understand their business, they will use a preparation warranted to dry hard in five or six hours. Of course, you will have the floors of the living rooms treated earliest in the day. If any must be done so late hat the furniture cannot be set back in place until the morrow, let it be drawing room and guest chamber. A draft of fresh air sweeping through the apartments facilitates the business. If there be any trace of “tackiness” about the floors do not relay rugs until the next day, and treat lightly upon the polished surface. A footprint is more easily removed from it than the pattern pressed into them by the underside of the heavy rugs.

From first to last study prayerfully to keep temper and nerves in hard. Make the inevitable endurable by a cheerful spirit. At the worst it is never so bad in the doing as in the dreading.

Our next week’s talk will be headed: “When John Brings a Friend Home to Dinner.”

Marion Harland

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