The most beautiful bed of pansies I've seen was in a South Dakota yard on a sizzling day.
Pansies are supposed to like it cool, but those great velvety flowers were healthy and perky in the glaring sun.
I sought out the gardener and asked him what he did to produce such beauties in that weather.
He seemed puzzled by my question.
"I just love them", he said.

The more I talked with him, the more convinced I became that that was the secret of their riotous blooming.
Of course his love was expressed in intelligent care.
He planted the pansy seeds himself, buying them from a pansy specialist.
These specialists, I learned, have done a great deal of work to improve the size and health of the plants and the resulting flowers.
Their seeds produce vigorous blooming plants half again the size of the unimproved strains.

I asked him if he took seeds from his own plants.
Occasionally, when he had an unusual flower that he wanted more of he did;
but pansy seeds, he told me, soon "run down".
It's best to buy them fresh from a dealer who is working to improve them.

His soil was "nothing special", just prairie land, but he had harrowed in compost until it was loose, spongy and brown-black.
I fingered it and had the feeling of adequacy that comes with the right texture, tilth and body.
It isn't easy to describe it, but every gardener knows it when his fingers touch such soil.

Nothing is easier to grow from seed than pansies.
They germinate quickly, the tiny plants appearing in a week, and grow along lustily.
It doesn't really matter which month of the year you sow them, but they germinate best when they have a wide variation of temperature, very warm followed by cool in the same 24 hours.

I like to make a seedbed right in the open, though many people start them successfully in cold frames.
Pansies don't have to be coddled;
they'd rather have things rugged, with only moderate protection on the coldest days.
If you do use a cold frame be sure that its ventilation is adequate.

For my seedbed I use good garden soil with a little sand added to encourage rooting.
I dig it, rake it smooth, sow the seeds and wet them down with a fog spray.
Then I cover the sowing with a board.
This keeps it cool and moist and protects it from birds.
Ants carry away the seeds so better be sure that there are no ant hills nearby.

When the first sprinkling of green appears I remove the board.
A light, porous mulch applied now keeps the roots cool and the soil soft during these early days of growth.
I like sawdust for this, or hay.

When they have 4 to 6 leaves and are thrifty little plants, it's time to set them out where they are to remain.
Every time you transplant a pansy you cause its flowers to become smaller.
The moral is: don't transplant it any oftener than you must.
As soon as they are large enough to move, I put mine 9 inches apart where they are to bloom.
I put a little scoop of pulverized phosphate rock or steamed bone meal into each hole with the plant.
That encourages rooting, and the better developed the roots, the larger and more plentiful the flowers.

Pansies are gluttons.
I doubt if it is possible to overfeed them.
I spade lots of compost into their bed;
lacking that, decayed manure spread over the bed is fine.
One year I simply set the plants in the remains of a compost pile, to which a little sand had been added, and I had the most beautiful pansies in my, or any of my neighbors' experience.
In addition to the rich soil they benefit by feedings of manure water every other week, diluted to the color of weak tea.
As a substitute for this, organic fertilizer dissolved in water to half the strength in the directions, may be used.

They need mulch.
We put a light mulch over the seedlings;
now we must use a heavy one.
Three inches of porous material will do a good job of keeping weeds down and the soil moist and cool.

When winter comes be ready with additional mulch.
I like hay for this and apply it so that only the tops of the plants show right after a good frost.
That keeps in the cold, retains moisture and prevents the heaving of alternate freezing and thawing.

Don't miss the pansies that appear from time to time through the winter.
Whenever there is a thaw or a few sunny days, you'll be likely to find a brave little blossom or two.
If those aren't enough for you, why not grow some just for winter blooming?
The pansies I cherished most bloomed for me in February during a particularly cold winter.
I started the seed in a flat in June and set out the little pansies in a cold frame.
(An unheated greenhouse would have been better, if I had had one.
) The plants took zero nights in their stride, with nothing but a mat of straw over the glass to protect them.
In response to the lengthening days of February they budded, then bloomed their 4-inch velvety flowers.
That cold frame was my morale builder;
its mass of bright bloom set in a border of snow made my spirits rise every time I looked at it.
Like strawberries in December, pansies are far more exciting in February than in May.
Try that late winter pickup when you are so tired of cold and snow that you feel you just can't take another day of it.

The day will come, in midsummer, when you find your plants becoming "leggy", running to tall-growing foliage at the expense of blossoms.
Try pegging down each separate branch to the earth, using a bobby pin to hold it there.
Pick the flowers, keep the soil dampened, and each of the pegged-down branches will take root and become a little plant and go on blooming for the rest of the season.
As soon as an experimental tug assures you that roots have taken over, cut it off from the mother plant.

A second and also good practice is to shear off the tops, leaving an inch high stub with just a leaf or two on each branch.
These cut-down plants will bud and blossom in record time and will behave just as they did in early spring.
I like to shear half my plants at a time, leaving one half of them to blossom while the second half is getting started on its new round of blooming.

Probably no one needs to tell you that the way to stop all bloom is to let the blossoms go to seed.
Nature's aim, different from ours, is to provide for the coming generation.
That done, her work is accomplished and she ignores the plant.

Here is a word of advice when you go shopping for your pansy seeds.
Go to a reputable grower, preferably a pansy specialist.
It is no harder to raise big, healthy, blooming plants than weak, sickly little things;
in fact it is easier.
But you will never get better flowers than the seed you grow.

Many people think that pansies last only a few weeks, then their period of growth and bloom is over.
That is not true.
If the plants are cared for and protected over the winter, the second year is more prolific than the first.

Would you like to grow exhibition pansies?
Remove about half the branches from each plant, leaving only the strongest with the largest buds.
The flowers will be huge.

Pansies have character.
They stick to their principles, insist upon their due, but grow and bloom with dependable regularity if given it.
Treat them right and they'll make a showing every month in the year except the frigid ones.
Give them food, some shade, mulch, water and more food, and they'll repay your solicitude with beauty.

A salad with greens and tomato is a popular and wonderfully healthful addition to a meal, but add an avocado and you have something really special.
This delightful tropical fruit has become well-known in the past thirty years because modern transportation methods have made it possible to ship avocados anywhere in the United States.
It has a great many assets to recommend it and if you haven't made avocado a part of your diet yet, you really should.

You will find that avocado is unlike any other fruit you have ever tasted.
It is roughly shaped like a large pear, and when properly ripened, its dark green skin covers a meaty, melon-like pulp that has about the consistency of a ripe Bartlett pear, but oily.
The avocado should have a "give" to it, as you hold it, when it is ripe.
The flavor is neither sweet, like a pear, nor tart like an orange;
it is subtle and rather bland, nut-like.
It is a flavor that might take a little getting used to -- not because it is unpleasant, but because the flavor is hard to define in the light of our experience with other fruits.
Sometimes it takes several "eatings" of avocado to catch that delightful quality in taste that has made it such a favorite throughout the world.
Once you become an avocado fan, you will look forward to the season each year with eager anticipation.

Naturally dormant and no spray danger

Today, refrigerated carriers have made the shipping of avocados possible to any place in the world.
The fruit is allowed to mature on the tree, but it is still firm at this point.
It is brought to packing houses, cleaned and graded as to size and quality, and packed in protective excelsior.
The fruit is then cooled to 42-degrees-F., a temperature at which it lapses into a sort of dormant state.
This cooling does not change the avocado in any way, it just delays the natural softening of the fruit until a grovelike temperature (room temperature) is restored.
This happens on the grocer's shelf or in your kitchen.

One of the most attractive things about avocados is that they do not require processing of any kind.
There is no dyeing or waxing or gassing needed.
If the temperature is controlled properly, the avocado will delay its ripening until needed.
And unlike other fruits, one cannot eat the skin of the avocado.
It is thick, much like an egg plant's skin, so that poison sprays, if they are used, present no hazard to the consumer.

Nutritious and a cholesterol reducer

Good taste and versatility, plus safety from spray poisons would be enough to recommend the frequent use of such a fruit, even if its nutritional values were limited.
Avocados, however, are very rich in nutrients.
Their main asset is an abundance of unsaturated fatty acids, so necessary for maintaining the good health of the circulatory system.
Aside from this, the average portion contains some protein, an appreciable amount of vitamins A and C -- about one-tenth of the minimum daily requirement, and about a third of the official vitamin E requirement.
The B vitamins are well represented, especially thiamin and riboflavin.
Calcium, phosphorus and iron are present in worthwhile amounts, and eleven other minerals also have been found in varying trace amounts.
None of these values is destroyed, not significantly altered by refrigeration storage.

Dr. Wilson C. Grant, of the Veterans' Administration Hospital, Coral Gables, Florida, and the University of Miami School of Medicine, set out to discover if avocados, because of their high content of unsaturated fatty acids, would reduce the cholesterol of the blood in selected patients.
The study comprised 16 male patients, ranging in age from 27 to 72.
They were put on control diets to determine as accurately as possible, the normal cholesterol level of their blood.
Then they were given 1/2 to 1-1/2 avocados per day as a substitute for part of their dietary fat consumption.