232 



GARDENING. 



April 75, 



«EDENIM6 



William Falconer, Editor. 



EACH Month 



THE GARDENING COiyiPANY, 



Monon Building, CHICAGO. 



Adver- 



Subscriptlon Price. *2.00 a Year— 24 Numl 

 tlslnK rates on aoDllcatlon. 

 Entered at Chicago posCoflace as second-class matter. 

 Copyright, ISM. by The Gardening Co. 



s relating to suDHcrlptlons. adver- 



tisements and other busln 



_ _ should _ 



addressed to The Gardening Company. Monon r 

 , Chicago, i 



f the r_r„ 



NG, Glen Cove, N. T. 



GARDENING Is gotten up for Us readers and In their 

 Interest, and It behooves you. one and all, to make 11 

 Interesting. If It does not exactly suit your case, 

 please write and tell us what you want. It Is our 

 desire to help you. 



ASK ANY Questions you please about plants. 

 Howers. fruits, vegetables or other practical gardening 

 matters. We will take pleasure In answering them. 



Send us Notes of your experience In gardening In 



Photog 

 flowers, gardens, grei 



graved for Gardening 



perhaps t 



OR Sketches of 

 enhouses. fruits, 

 horticultural appliances that ^ 



CONTENTS. 



aquatics. 

 1 Oaks, Washington (illus.] 



E FLOWER GARDEN. 



Various questions 



Our summer garden ... 



Fall sown sweet peas 



A bed oQcannas (illus.) . .... 



Gladioli 



Sweet peas ... 



Clematis-Neat vine 



Fertilizer-Hen manuie 



Amaryllis Belladonna 



Cosmos— Dahlias-Chrysanthemums . 



A tree morning glory Ullus.) 



the lawn. 



ROSES. 



My little greenhouse . . . 

 Ornithogalum arabicum 

 Chrysanthemums in pots i 



Diseased palm leaves Viza 



Primula— Clematis . 229 



Shading (or greenhouses ... 230 



Chrysanthemums from seed . . . .230 



Lemon verbena from seed 230 



Worms in the soil 230 



ORCHIDS. 



Orchids 230 



THE FRUIT GARDEN. 



The fruit gardeu . . . . . . . 2,'!0 



Greenhouse grapes (illus.) 230 



A dozen of the best pears 231 



Raspberries and blackberries . ... 231 



the vegetable garden. 



The vegetable garden 233 



Self blanching celery 234 



The Vaughan potato 234 



miscellaneous. 



St?rting in the seed business. 234 



Catalogues 236 



Mrs. Fairman Rogers Canna is a yellow 

 banded variety of the Queen Charlotte 

 type, it was a seedling raised at Newport, 

 R. I , by James Cowles. A gentleman 

 writing to us from Boston the other day 

 says he regards the Rogers as being finer 

 than Queen Charlotte. A few years ago, 

 when this Newport canna was raised, 

 shown and exhibited, we heard a good deal 

 about it, but where is it now? It isn't 

 listed so far as we know, and we hear 

 nothing of it. Queen Charlotte came to 

 us but little ovtr a year ago, and not- 

 withstanding its expensiveness it was, 

 widely tried last summer, and we saw it 

 at several places. This way of lighting a 

 candle and setting it under a bushel is 

 rather poor business. 



A PRETTY LITTLE EVERLASTING.— Its 



name is Xeranthemutn annavm superbis- 

 simum flore plena ruhrum\ Itisanatinual, 

 a seed novelty, easily grown and in its 

 way a desirable little flower. 



Another pretty little flower with 

 an outrageously cumbersome name is 

 Lychnis Flos-cuculi plenissima sewper- 

 dorens. It is a neat hardy perennial, with 

 double fringe-like pale rose colored flow- 

 ers, and continues in bloom more or less 

 all summer. In spite of its name it is a 

 beautiful little plant. 



What is a seed pan? is a question some 

 may ask. It Is a wide— from 6 to 12 

 inches generally— shallow, earthenware 

 dish like a flo wer pot, and much used in 

 greenhouses to raise seedlings in. They 

 are round or square in form, 2 to 3 inches 

 deep as a rule, and a little narrower at 

 the bottom than at the top, and to admit 

 of ready drainage the bottom is freely 

 perforated. 



Stock for Rocky Mt. Cherry.— A 

 correspondent asks "What is the species 

 and what stock should I use to graft or 

 or bud it on?" It is Prunus Besseyi, and 

 closely related to our common sand 

 cherry, Prunus puwila. If you want to 

 increase the species raise it from seed, if 

 to propagate the finer varieties work 

 them on to stocks of P. puwila, or better 

 still, on to seedlings of itself. Try the 

 Jewell Nursery Co., Lake City, Minn., the 

 Phoenix Nursery Co., Bloomington, III , 

 or some other western nursery for seed or 

 seedlings. 



Home-made Mushroom Spawn.— Mr. 

 S. Edward Paschall used to grow mush- 

 rooms and make spawn at Doylestown, 

 Pa. A couple of years ago he removed 

 from there to West Chester in the same 

 state, where he bought and still edits the 

 village weekly newspaper ( Village Record ) 

 having given up his gardening operations. 

 But his love lor gardening is unquencha- 

 ble, and he hope to re-enterthefield of hor- 

 ticulture, giving special attention to 

 selecting and perpetuating varieties of 

 mushrooms. At the same time he will 

 still hold on to his newspaper. 



Money in the Greenhouse.— Our note 

 under this heading, page 216, put a diflfer- 

 ent construction upon the profits in 

 flowers from what many entertained. 

 Apropos of it one of the busiest and most 

 progressive florists about New York 

 writes us: "I have invested somewhere 

 between $50,000 and $60,000 in the flo- 

 rist business, and have a very large green- 

 house plant, and as finea tradein my line- 

 cut flowers and plants— as any one in the 

 business, and sometimes sell as much as 

 $2,000 worth in a single week, yet I am 

 put to my wit's end to make $2,500 a 

 vear." 



A NEW double flowered sunflower. 

 —One of the novelties that we shall be 

 treated to in the near future is a new 

 double flowered sunflower, or rather rud- 

 bcckia. Tre flowers are bright yellow, 

 full-double without being stiff at all, and 

 different in that line from anything we 

 now have. Whence it came no one knows. 

 It was something "somebody sent in but 

 who sent it or where it came Irom we 

 haven't the least recollection. It had 

 been lying around and happened to get 

 planted out there with a lot of other 

 things." That's its history as given to us 

 by the florist who has got the plant. We 

 saw it in bloom last summer and were 

 particularly well pleased with it. It is a 

 hardy perennial. 



Flats or Seed Boxes. — What is a flat? 

 some may ask. It is a shallow box such 

 as florists and gardeners use to sow seeds 

 in, prick off seedlings into, or transplant 

 rooted cuttings into. Flats may be made 

 of any size, say 12x18 inches, by 3 or 4 

 inches deep. Pine is the best wood to 

 make them of. But we can not afford to 

 buy new boards to make flats of, instead 

 we go to the grocery stores and buy a 

 lot of "empties, "thatis of old soap boxes 

 or other boxes goods had come in, get- 

 ting the tops vi'ith them. These empties 

 cost only a few cents each. We take an 

 ordinary soap box and saw it lengthwise 

 into three equal parts, according to its 

 depth, getting two complete flats— the 

 top part and the bottom part— and all of 

 a third one except the bottom from the 

 middle cut. For bottoms for these bot- 

 tomless middles we use up a few extra 

 bo.xes, or maybe some old pieces of thin 

 boards we may have lying about the 

 place. The bottoms of such boxes are 

 apt to be tight, so with an auger we bore 

 a lot of holes in them. We prefer, how- 

 ever, to have the slats of the bottoms a 

 little apart from each other, the drainage 

 is better. Don't paint theinsides of these 

 flats; instead wash them with thin cement. 



IS KflLMlfl LflTlFOLIfl flflRDy AT CHICAGO? 



J. A. H., Winnetka, 111., asks "Is the 

 mountain laurel hardy in the west shore 

 ot Lake Michigan, i. e., in the neighbor- 

 hood of Chicago?" 



Mr. W. C Egan answers: "My experi- 

 ence with this beautiful shrub is that it 

 is precariously hardy at Highland Park, 

 Ills., but not happy, and will not thrive 

 under the ordinary conditions allotted to 

 the commoner shrubs. In a sheltered 

 position, in peaty soil, well rooted nur- 

 sery specimens will live several years, but 

 cannot be depended upon to bloom. I 

 wrapthebush in winter in matting. They 

 have wintered well this year." 



MAGNOLIA ORJASMINUM AARDY IN KANSAS. 



Magnolia grandidora and Jasminum 

 Sawhac are tender both in Missouri and 

 Kansas. I find b th of them to do well 

 in a good cellar without heat, and where 

 frost does not enter too severely. The 

 following are perfectly hardy in St. Louis 

 and will undoubtedh- prove so in the 

 eastern parts of Kansas: 



Magnolia acuminata. 



M. acuminata cordata. 



M. Fraseri. 



M.glauca. 



M. macrophylla. 

 , M tripetala. 



M. conspicua. 



M. obovata and the varieties Soulan- 

 geana, speciosa, Lenne, etc. J. Gurney. 



Missouri Botanical (iarden, St. Louis. 



ABOUT GRAVEL WALKS. 



Walks and drives should hardly ever be 

 made on a small place except for purposes 

 ol strict utility, these are of course to 

 keep away from the lawn traffic that 

 would injure it or be inconvenient to 

 vehicles or pedestrians. Even in the name 

 of utility, lines of travel are often laid 

 down which are quite superfluous. In 

 most cases the roads and paths detract 

 from more than they help thepicturesque- 

 ness of a garden, and they ought to be 

 treated rather as necessary evils than 

 things to be desired for their own sake. A 

 stretch of turf is more a;sthetic than an 

 equal area of macadam, and a lawn un- 

 broken save by its own undulations is 

 better than the same divided into two by 

 a sudden band of gravel, however grace- 

 ful niav be its curves. H. A. Caparn. 



