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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.
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