MANURE FOR FLOWER BEDS. 



mention. The former has thick waxy 

 petals, a characteristic of all the Speci- 

 osums, the color is glistening white, 

 spotted and clouded with rosy scarlet, 

 each petal is bordered with the same 

 color Opal is still more grandly colored, 

 the petals appear as if covered with hoar 



frost, delicately suffused and heavily 

 spotted with crimson, and tipped with 

 white. These two are still held at an 

 almost prohibitive figure. 



Webster Bros. 

 Hamilton, On/. 



MANURE FOR FLOWER BEDS. 



rRESH compost can only be used 

 with benefit as a mulch in late 

 autumn to prevent the heaving of 

 newly set plants. If compost is to be 

 applied to bulbs or the roots of peren- 

 nials, it should be at least a year old, 

 and thoroughly rotted. A cow and a 

 flower bed travel well together, provided 

 they are kept in separate compartments. 

 The barn yard muck where cows are 

 kept is an excellent plant food ; in our 

 estimation it is the best, and whenever 

 we can obtain plenty of it we wish for 

 no other. That part of the enclosure 

 which is free from coarse straw and 

 stable litter, in which the animals 

 thoroughly pulverize their droppings 

 with their feet and incorporate them 

 with the soil underneath contains the 

 correct thing. Scrape this into heaps 

 with hoe or rake, take it to your flower 

 beds and spread it over them in the fall, 

 be liberal with it, don't be afraid, and 

 you will marvel the following summer at 

 the wonders of floral creation. The 

 effect is astonishing. You need no 

 longer lament that your flowers are not 

 as fine as grandmother's were a half 

 century ago. Your plants will receive 

 new life, and their vigorous growth will 

 defy the ravages of the insect world. It 

 will make them more floriferous, and 



the brilliancy of the colors will surprise 

 you. 



The leachings of manure water that 

 accumulate in a depression of the barn 

 yard are a treasure, and should be util- 

 ized. Carry them to your rose and 

 hydrangea beds after a heavy rain, apply 

 the liquid with a sprinkling can with 

 the rose removed ; there let the solution 

 percolate through the soil down to the 

 thread-like, fibrous roots, where nature's 

 alchemist will assimilate them, and mark 

 the result. 



If all the barn yard leachings that are 

 now running to waste throughout the 

 country could be utilized in this way, 

 two roses would bloom instead of one, 

 our hydrangeas would have heads twice 

 as large, and other plants would be 

 equally floriferous. Barn yard leach- 

 ings can be applied with equal benefit 

 to all perennial plants and small fruits. 

 Celery fairly revels in it, and we are 

 safe in saying that a corn stalk would 

 produce twice as much corn. 



If we persist in setting out flowering 

 plants and watch them slowly starving 

 to death without making even the fee- 

 blest effort to succor them, we will never 

 be successful floYiculturists.— Rept. Pa. 

 Hort. Soc, '95. 



150 



