332 



GARDENING. 



July 15, 



haunts that I prefer nursery-grown 

 stock." That is the practical man's 

 view too, but it isn't the beginner's. 

 The latter, seeing such pretty bushes 

 growing wild and free for the digging, 

 looks upon it as a waste of monev to buy 

 shrubs from a nursery, so he hitches up a 

 wagon and shoulders a shovel or spade 

 and betakes himself to the woods. After 

 getting there he finds that bushes that 

 look pretty in mass are lean, scrawly and 

 unbecoming when dug up separately; the 

 digging is rough work, and the roots are 

 not always at home, but stretching far 

 away and interlaced among those of 

 their neighbors, so that when the ball is 

 dug up its mass is made up more of roots 

 cut off from other bushes than of those 

 attached to the dug-up plant. I'nless 

 provision is made tor moistening the 

 roots as soon as they are unearthed, 

 and keeping them moist till they are 

 planted again, the fibres are apt to 

 shrivel and die and the shrub suffer in 

 proportion. The wild plants are not 

 likelv to exactly fit your wants; they look 

 shabby, and to cut them down as we 

 ought to enough to counterbalance the 

 loss of roots they would be stumpy and 

 uglier than ever" Nursery-grown pli.nts 

 are grown as individuals and not in 

 thickets, hence have good bodies; they 

 are well rooted, having been once or 

 oftener transplanted in the rows, and 

 their roots are not matted up all around 

 with those of other plants. They are dug 

 carefully and at the proper season, and 

 preserved from drying inriuence, and they 

 reach you just when you want them, and 

 there is no bother or uncertainty with 

 them. Wild shrubs are a risk. 



Plants i-or Next Summer.— If you 

 haven't already sown them, better sow a 

 lot of columbine, delphinium, perennial 

 coreopsis and gaillardia, hollyhocks fox- 

 gloves, campanulas, sweet williams and 

 the like, and get them into strong, well- 

 rooted plants before the winter sets in. 

 If you sowed them earlier in the year 

 and they are now up nicely, get them 

 pricked off into beds or frames, far enough 

 apart to allow them make good growth 

 without choking each other and weaken- 

 ing their crowns. 



Common Wild Flowers or Weeds — 

 Among the common and most conspicu- 

 ous wild plants or weeds now in bloom 

 by the road sides and near the edges of 

 our woods are moth mullein (I'erbascum 

 Blattaria), tall bellflower {Campanula 

 Americana), wild teasel (Dipsacus sylves- 

 tris), starry campion (Silene stellata), 

 man of-the-earth creeper (Ipomoea pan- 

 durata), ox-eye daisy, wild carrot, cat- 

 nip, wild verbena, the common yellow 

 toad-flax andthe St. John's wort (Hyper- 

 icum perforatum). 



Are We Better Behaved? In an Eng- 

 lish paper {The Gardeners' Magazine) we 

 read: "It is a common occurrence to see 

 large numbers of cyclists returning home 

 carrying large bunches of flowers, and 

 were they honestly obtained no further 

 proof could be desired as to the ex stence 

 of a genuine affection for therh. Some of 

 these bunches are undoubtedly the gifts 

 of friends. Others are obtained by pur- 

 chase, but in the majority of cases they 

 are the result of pilfering the hedgerow or 

 garden." Although the bicycle craze is 

 pretty high with us in this country, we 

 don't think stealing flowers is one of its 

 evils. 



The Advantage of Raised Flower 

 Beds.— The flower beds here are spread 

 on a broad stretch of level lawn in front 

 of the Phipps Conservatories; the l.nul is 



very clayey, retentive of moisture and ill 

 drained, and as we have had an uninter- 

 ruptedlv wet season, we are now see- 

 ing the evil eflFectofpoordrainage. Wher- 

 ever the earth in the beds is raised well 

 above the level of the ground all of the 

 bedding plants are doing well in it, but 

 at the ordinary ground level most every- 

 thing is suffering; sempervivums, santo- 

 lina and centaurea are dyiiig out and 

 even coleus isn't as happy as it is in drier 

 ground. 



"Lilium Parryi is a handsome Califor- 

 nia lily that belongs to the pardalinum 

 group and has rich yellow flowers, strong 

 shoots bearing a dozen or even more 

 blooms. It is easily grown in moist 

 peaty soil with the partial shadeof shrubs 

 near^ and those who have a suitable 

 place for it might plant a bold group." 

 So says the London Garden. A dozen 

 blooms to a stem is finer than we ever 

 saw it. In a wide patch in a rockery at 

 Cambridge it grew and bloomed nicely 

 with us, still it is one of the pretty lilies 

 that has never become popular; few peo- 

 ple grow it, more's the pity, for it is a 

 chaste and beautiful flower, but neither 

 large, bold, or startling at all. 



The Comical Toad.— .\ New England 

 reader writes: "Have you ever fed a toad 

 with a caterpill r or potato bug? If not 

 vou have lost one of the most comical 

 sights to be had, and one which we in 

 our hurry to get every creature out of 

 harm's way are apt to overlook. The 

 toads are very useful little beasts, ugly 

 though thev be, and one can train them 

 so that thev do not f ar our approach 

 How alert are they after dark, hopping 

 in the walks of the garden and making 

 many a snatch at the bugs they come 

 within reach of It takes five years for a 

 toad to be full grown." Yes, yes, the 

 toad has its good points and its bad 

 ones That it is a voracious and persist- 

 ent insect trap we know very wtll. we 

 have used hundreds of them for this pur- 

 pose, and when we were a boy we tamed 

 them and fed them. Some 24 years ago 

 we told how in the London market gar- 

 dens we paid from three to four cents a 

 dozen for toads to put into the cucum- 

 ber frames to eat up the insects. Their 

 bad points consist in the way they have 

 of elbowing out a comfortable li tie rest- 

 ing place for themselves in our flower 

 beds, seed beds, and even in our flats or 

 seed pans. 



Chickweed in the Lawn.— L. E W., 

 Gordon Park, asks; "What is best to do 

 this autumn with a lawn which is lull of 

 chickweed?" Ans. Chickweed in lawns 

 is very troublesome in spring and fall, 

 especiallv where the ground is a little 

 shaded by trees, or is moist; it grows be- 

 cause the seed is in the soil, and it chokes 

 out the grass. Plowing or digging the 

 ground might not help you any, for the 

 earth being full of the chickweed seed the 

 pest would be sure to grow up The 

 thing to do now is to discourage the 

 growth of the chickweed and encourage 

 the grass, till the latter becomes so deep 

 rooted and matted as to choke < ut the 

 former. Prepare a big heap of good field 

 loam— from an open corn, grain or pas- 

 ture field, and not from the garden— and 

 mix a lot of fine manure with it; horse 

 manure freed from the rankstrawisgood, 

 or cow manure, for it contains much 

 grass seed, will do. In August mow and 

 roll the lawn, and with a new steel rake, 

 rake oft' all of the chickweed and other 

 weeds you can tear out of the ground, 

 then apply a heavy dressing of the previ- 

 ously prepared compost and sow sonie 

 red top and Kentucky blue grass upon it. 



raUng it in lightly and rolling it. If the 

 chickweed continues to grow more vigor- 

 ously than the grass, keep it mowed 

 down and raked ofl; never let it get the 

 better of the grass, and instead of top- 

 dressing the lawn with stable manure in 

 winter use wood ashes, light dressings of 

 nitrate of soda, and other chemical fertil- 

 izers, but be very wary in applying them. 

 Then you have got to be more vigilant in 

 spring than in fall, for chickweed starts 

 to grow very early, and blooms and 

 ripens seed before grass makes much head- 

 way. Remember that there is no appli- 

 cation that you can put on your land 

 that will destroy the chickweed without 

 also injuring the grass. 



The Fruit Garden. 



Fine-flavored Strawberries. — ^J. R. 

 M., New London, Conn,, asks: "What 

 are the best flavored strawberries? What 

 do you think of the one named Brandy- 

 wine?" Ans. The best flavored sorts is 

 a matter of location and cultural condi- 

 tions. Wehavehad splendid, big, scarlet, 

 juicv berries of Sharplessone year so sour 

 as to pucker the mouth, and anotheryear 

 most as high flavored as an Elton Pine. 

 In the "sour" year the ground and 

 weather was wet, in the "sweet" season 

 the ground was moist but the weather 

 quite dry. The later pickings are better 

 flavored than the first ones. We have no 

 varieties with so pronounced a flavor as 

 the European sorts such asBti'ishOueen, 

 Sir Joseph Paxton, Prince's Pine and 

 Elton Pine have got, and unfortunately 

 while these varieties submit to pot and 

 greenhouse cultivation with us they are 

 worthless out of doors. The Marshall is 

 one of our best flavored sorts; Timbrell, 

 where it does well, is very good; Cumber- 

 land has a mild pleasant flavor; and Par- 

 ker Earle is favorite home berry. Bran- 

 dywine is an excellent berry so far as we 

 have seen it, what it may be in other 

 parts of the country.' though we cannot 

 tell. Crawford, where it does well is 

 much esteemed for its fine quality. 



Fear the Blight.— R. L. T., DeKalb, 

 111., has some young dwarf pear trees 

 that wee perfcct'y healthy a few weeks 

 ago, but are now affected with a blight 

 which blackens the leaves and shrivels 

 the wood. Ans. It is no doubt the fire 

 blight. Cut out every bit of afiected 

 wood and burn it, and in cutting be sure 

 to cut down into the healthy wood so as 

 to make sure that you have got every bit 

 of diseased growth. Root out the dead 

 plants and burn them up too; if you let 

 them stay in the ground they propagate 

 and spread the disease which is fungoid 

 and carried in the atmosphere. There is 

 no known cure for it. Early and repeated 

 sprayings with Bordeaux mixture are 

 said to act as a preventive, at least in a 



"Mv Japan Persimmon, what ails it?" 

 — M. H. C, Santa Cruz, Cal., asks: "I 

 bought it in March, '94, and as I re- 

 quested the nurseryman to prune it I did 

 not do so, although it was top heavy 

 and had large roots. It is alive but has 

 never made a single leaf; it is just as bare 

 as the day it came." Ans. We cannot 

 tell. But if it doesn't show pretty prom- 

 ising signs of a speedy and good growth, 

 we would very soon grub it up and throw 

 it away and' make room for another. 

 When it was planted we would have 

 headed it considerably, this would have 

 been for its good, and induced an early 

 start into new life. 



