A simple sieve, which works well, may be made from a small soap or starch box.  Knock the bottom out and use in place of this wire netting.  Helena and Eloise made two sieves which did for all the girls.  Eloise also made some very good flats as described before under the chapter on the girls’ winter work.  You can easily see how excellent this style of flat is from a drainage point of view.

More trouble, in potted bulbs and all kinds of plants, comes from too little drainage space than from any other one thing.  Most boys and girls think it enough if one little stone or piece of pot is put in the hole of the flower pot.  Not so; there should be from one to two inches of drainage material in the pot.  That seems a great deal, doesn’t it?  But it will give not only drainage but air space, too, and this keeps the plant in good healthy shape.  With too little drainage area the earth in a pot gets clogged and very often sour.  A high pot needs more drainage matter in it than a low one.  First use a piece of broken pot to place over the drainage hole.  But put this in such a position that the drainage hole will be kept open.  Then put in two inches of coarse material like broken pot.  It is now a good plan to place over this a layer of coarse material.  This gives a greater opportunity for air.  Over this goes the soil you have already prepared.  Place bulbs just below the surface and have soil one inch below the top of pot.  Narcissus and hyacinths may be planted with their tops out of the soil.

A low pot needs less drainage material.  Some pots have sphagnum moss over the drainage.  Instead of this use old sod finely torn up or coarse soil.  See, too, that the bulb comes nearly to the top of the soil.  When indoor bulbs are planted at some distance below the surface of the soil they have too much work to do to force their way up and out.  It takes too long.

After the girls had finished potting the next step was to make arrangements for the resting time.  Bulbs should stay in the dark and cold from five to ten weeks.  It is difficult to give an exact time as conditions differ and bulbs too.

Bulbs may take their retirement in a dark cold cellar where there is no danger from mice.  Some attics are suited for this.  Eloise put hers in an old bureau.  This bureau was in an unused, cold room.  The bulbs were placed in the drawers which were then closed, but not tightly.  Ethel, Dee and Josephine put theirs in the cellar.  Helena, Elizabeth and Katharine tried another plan.  They had a trench dug outdoors two feet deep and eighteen inches wide.  In this they placed their pots and flats.  Then the trench was filled in with dirt and over this a layer of ashes was put.  The pots were given a good watering before they were sunk into the ground.  Unless the winter is a very dry and open one the bulbs will need no more water.  If there should be little snow-fall then it may be necessary to water the ground where the bulbs are, but this is not usual.  Little sticks were put into the ground just where the bulbs were.  These help in locating them when digging-up time comes.  The girls left them in the ground for six weeks.  Then they were taken in and put in a cold north window for a week.  Helena put hers in the dark a week and then brought them to a north window for another week.  Then she put them in a south window.