Growing annual flowering plants

Description

"Annual flowering plants are useful for quick though temporary effects and for flowers of a season of the year when blossoms on permanent plants are scarce. Such plants in clumps in bays or pockets among shrubs or between herbaceous perennials make the beds and borders bright with bloom at a time when they might otherwise be dull and uninteresting. The quick growth makes them valuable in providing either foliage or flowers to fill temporary gaps in permanent plantings or to give a temporary effect here such planting does not exist. Several grow to a height of 6-feet or more, others hardly more than as many inches, while many are of intermediate height and show great variations in their habits of growth in the color and character of their foliage. Most of those annual plants are also valuable for supplying cut flowers for indoor decoration. They are of easy culture, profuse in bloom, have bright colors and lend themselves readily to decorative arrangement. Some of them can be sown in the open ground in the fall or in the early spring before freezing weather is past; others must be kept away from frost at all times. some need to be sown where they are to bloom; others thrive better when transplanted one or more times. There are also differences in the kinds and conditions of soil, moisture, and light which they will thrive best. Cold frames and hotbeds are helpful in starting many of these plants, and for some of them they are essential to success at least in the coldest climates, if living-room windows are greenhouses are not available."--Page ii.

Subjects

Series Statement

• United States. Dept. of Agriculture. Farmers' bulletin -- no. 1171