Sowing and Growing Biennials: Biennials, if they are to develop into sizeable plants, need plenty of room for growing, and space usually has to be found outside the flower garden proper. For instance, the seedlings of wall-flowers and forget-me-nots, two of the best spring bedders, need to be set out 9 in or so apart, in rows 12 in apart. The vegetable garden is often the best place for them, sometimes the only place.
They can, for example, in July, go into the ground from which early potatoes have been dug and cleared, occupying it until October.
Biennials are generally sown out in the open when the ground is warm in April, May and June. A small nursery bed needs raking down finely and the seeds go in short V-drills around half an inch deep. Apply a trickle of water all along the bottom of the drill before sowing. Keep a special look-out for slugs and sparrows. Wallflowers, sweet williams, forget-me-nots, Bellis (daisies), foxgloves, Canterbury bells, stocks, pansies, Iceland poppies and hollyhocks are all quite easy to grow.
Polyanthus can be treated as biennials too. In fact, they will give their best flowers in the first year after sowing, and for this reason are often sown afresh every year, and the old plants thrown away after flowering. Grown this way they need a slightly earlier start than most of the others, mainly because they are slow in the early stages. They are best sown in pans or boxes in a warm greenhouse in February or March, pricked out into boxes like half-hardy annuals, and planted out around July in nursery rows to grow on.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that all plants grown as biennials have to be given plenty of space at this growing-on stage. They must develop into good plants before being set into final positions in the autumn. It cannot be done in any hole or corner of the garden. They must be treated as important plants if good results are wanted, and given a good open position in reasonable ground, with space to expand. A drop of water to each individual plant when transplanted will get them quickly established, and all through the summer they must be kept hoed and free from smothering weeds.
