44 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 



time to do such things, they are busy on the farm. There 

 are several schools trying the experience of allowing the 

 children to plant in window boxes in early April and are show- 

 ing them how to do it. But as there is not room for all the 

 children to plant in these window boxes, there is a new idea 

 which originated in the country, where the children are en- 

 gaged in the fall and the spring assisting their parents at 

 agricultural work. 



It was hard to get up any interest in school gardens, but 

 it was all the more important that they should have agri- 

 cultural instruction in the winter time. 



At Berkeley Heights, N. J., we devised this simple plan, 

 and it works. We made a number of wooden boxes, one 

 foot wide, two feet long, so they will just fit on the ledge 

 of a school desk. They are only three inches deep, with a 

 bottom of tin, turned up at the edges, or of well painted pine, 

 white-leaded at the joints. There is no drainage, since we 

 discovered that if they are not watered too much, they do 

 better without drainage. The holes usually made in the 

 bottoms of flower boxes carry off a lot of plant food with 

 the water that runs through. 



Now, how to store these boxes when they are not in the 

 sunny places near the windows ? Why, we set up four posts 

 of one-inch stuff at the four corners, so that the box looks 

 like a kitchen table turned upside down (see illustration). 

 Now the boxes filled with earth and with the young plants 

 growing can be stored at night, one on top of the other, by 

 the wall of the schoolroom. 



If it is going to be cold, and over Sundays, the pile of them 

 can be covered with newspapers, which keep them from get- 

 ting chilled and from drying up, or the boxes can be covered 

 and carried home by the children. We found that for most 



