88 ANNUAL REPORT. - 
Fertilizers and Cultivation. 
My roses grow in a light soil with much sand, to which has been added every 
spring more or less well rotted stable manure, with occasionally a supply of leaf 
mould from the woods. For steady summer diet they get the soap-suds from 
the wash every week. This is not applied on the surface to run off in unsightly 
streams into the paths, but a slight trench is dug around each bush so that not 
a drop of the fertilizing draught is lost, and the soil smoothed back again. This 
may seem like hard work and taking a good deal of time, but with a man to 
carry the water, it is all easily and quickly done, and the return is a hundred- 
fold both in growth and bloom. 
In addition to this, a barrel of liquid manure is kept on hand, and a small 
quantity, largely diluted, is applied about once uw week to the Teas, Bourbons 
and Noisettes. (The soap-suds does not usually hold out beyond the Hybrids 
and Junes.) The liquid manure should be used sparingly in hot weather, and 
in very dry weather not at all, unless daily and plentiful watering is done. 
The rich yellow clay found in various places about here, is an excellent ingre- 
dient in the soil for roses. A third or even half of this thoroughly incorporated 
with the soil, will produce most gratifying results. But after all, the hoe is the 
great fertilizer. Let hoeing be done like voting, ‘‘early and often,’’ day in and 
day out, be it hot or cold, wet or dry, and it will prove of infinitely more value 
than countless loads of manure without it. Ladies can be quite independont of 
help in this business, if they will take care to get the right kind of implement, 
A lady’s hoe should have a long, light, slender handle of tough wood, and a 
thin blade not more than three by five inches in size, securely riveted to the handle. 
This should be kept sharp, and not only free from rust, but clean and polished, 
for which purpose a bit of sand-paper should always have a place in the garden 
work-basket. With this ight instrument a vast amount of telling work can be 
done, by taking only a half hour of a morning, and it need not be tiring even to 
a delicate person. It isa most delightful and healthful exercise, to say nothing 
of the benefit of the pure air, and the sinell of the freshly stirred earth. 
Busybodies, pro and con. 
By the time the roses are half leaved out in the spring, busybody No. 1 
appears in the shape of a slug that eats away the under surface of the leaves. 
It shows a marked preference for the Hybrids but by no means neglects the 
others. Its fecundity is most marvelous, its appetite insatiable, and its active 
and ceaseless devotion to business might, like that of the ‘‘busy bee,’’ point a 
moral for the edification of mankind. The work of this pest is so rapid and de- 
structive that, unless speedily gotten rid of, it is good-bye to the roses. Busy- 
body, con, must now attack it with a strong solution of tobacco, and sprinkle 
the bushes freely with it, until the depredations cease. ‘T'wo applications are 
usually sufficient. 
This victory is no sooner achieved than foe No. 2 begins his annoying work. 
He folds the young leaves together, and then, shyly eating out at one end, he 
pounces on the young blossom buds, and, if not discoyered, his morning repast 
is fatal to the whole cluster of buds. No tobacco suffices for this hateful pest. 
He lies perched in his leaf-cot, provokingly indifferent to the narcotic deluge, 
