— many a man who has done as jyood things in the pardcninpj way in Great 

 l)ritaiii us can be done anywlicre in the world — is placed in the same awkward fix 

 wlun he comes into a country with a dry, hot climate like the United States. All 

 his lifc-lonp; has he been busy learuinpc liow to " let the air in" to the top, and 

 keep the wet away from the roots, till it is a second nature to him, and he finds it 

 almost as im])ossible to adopt just the contrary practice when he gets to America 

 as it is for a Polar bear to lay aside his long, white, furry coat, and walk about like 

 a tropical gentleman in his natural nankeen pantaloons and waistcoat. He cuts 

 away at his trees to let in the sun, and raises up his flower-beds to drain oft" the 

 wet, when it is just the very sun and drought that we have too much of. No man 

 can be a good gardener who will not listen to reason, and in a country where 

 nature evidently meant leaves for um!)rellas, take care how you snap your fingers 

 at her, by pruning without mercy, and '' liltin'' the hair i)i!^' 



If you find some of your transplanted trees flagging, and looking as if they 

 were going to say good-by to you, don't imagine you can save them by ]ionring 

 manure water about their roots. You might as well give a man nearly dead with 

 dcljility and starvation, as much plum-pudding as he could make a hearty meal of. 

 The best thing you can do is, first to reduce the top a little more (or a good deal 

 more if needful), for the difficulty most probably is, that we have more top to 

 exhaust than root to supply. Then loosen the soil, and water it if dry, and lastly, 

 mulch the ground as far as the roots extend. This you may do by covering it 

 with three or four inches of straw, litter, tan-bark, or something of that sort, to 

 keep the roots cool and moist, so as to coax them into new growth. Watering a 

 transplanted tree every day, and letting the surface dry hard with the sun and 

 wind, is too much like basting a joint of meat before the kitchen fire, to be looked 

 upon as decent treatment for anything living. If your tree is something rare and 

 curious, that you are afraid will die, and would not lose for the world, and yet 

 that won't start out, in spite of all your wishes, syringe the bark once every night 

 after sunset. This will freshen it, and make the dormant buds shoot out. 



If you find any of your fruit-trees barren, from too great running to wo«d, 

 about the first of June is the time to shorten back the long shoots, and clip or 

 pinch off the ends of the side shoots, so as to force the tree to expend its substance 

 in making fruit buds, instead of wasting every bit of sap in overgrowth. 



Make war upon insects all this month, and especially at the end of it, as if it 

 were the oliief duty of man to destroy them (there is no doubt about its being 

 the chief duty of the gardener). Tobacco water is your main weapon, and with 

 a syringe or a hand-engine, you can, if you take them in time, carry such 

 slaughter into the enemy's camp as would alarm the peace society, if there is one 

 among these creeping things. Slugs on rose bushes, or the green fly on plants, 

 will make their appearance by thousands and tens of thousands, as the weather 

 gets hot, and the nights summery. The time to open your light artillery upon 

 the "inemy," is very early in the morning, or just after sun-down — the latter the 

 better time, by all odds. Find out whetlier they " roost" on the under or upper 

 side of the leaves, or nibble away at the tender points of the shoots, and shower 

 them to the tune of " Old Yirginny" — i. e., strong tobacco water. If your plant 

 is of a delicate substance, mind, however, that you don't give it a fainting fit as 

 well as the vermin. Always make the tobacco water by mixing some rain water 

 with it, for such plants, and, if you have had no experience in the matter, dilute 

 and use some on a single plant before you undertake your whole border. After 

 half a day, you can tell how it works, and act accordingly. What you want is, 

 just strength enough to kill the insect, and not enough to injure the young leaves. 



An Old Digger 



