If you want a real pansy display next spring don’t depend on the basketfuls you’ll find at the local garden center.
Grow your own from seed or buy young plants from a specialist this fall. The advantage to you is simply this: you can pick the colors you need to harmonize with your spring garden and you can have a great, colorful array most economically.
New seed – and this is important – is available from growers in August. It germinates quickly and comes true to type. Plant the seed in a well-prepared seed bed approximately 1/8-inch deep – no more. Keep the seed moist at all limes and shade the seedbed and seedlings from the hot mid-day sun.
By September and October you will have a multitude of tiny plants to transplant to the border. But if your border is not well-drained, space them 4 to 6 inches apart in a nursery bed where the earth is built up 6 inches above the surrounding ground. Keep them watered. As pansies like cold weather, they will keep growing until the ground freezes. After it freezes, protect the beds with mulch of hay or other coarse material that will not pack down around the young plants. In early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked. lift the young plants and set them in the border.
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