43° The Canadian Horticulturist. 



manure, when the fact is that one half the money's worth of nitrate of soda and 

 powdered phosphate of Hme will answer better and create no nuisance. They 

 furnish to the soil, what is most needed, an alkali, phosphoric acid and nitrogen, 

 both of them are inoderous and show their effects immediately on their applica- 

 tion. 



Boston, Ont. Andrew H. Ward. 



MANURE FOR FLOWER BEDS. 



RESH 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 perennials, 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 compart- 

 ments. 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 

 barnyard are a treasure and should be utilized. 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 roDts, where nature's alchemist will assimilate them, and 

 mark the result. 



If all the barnyard 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. Barnyard leachings 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 feeblest effort to succor them, we will never 

 be successful floriculturists. — Rept. Pa. Hort. Soc, '95. 



