XXIII 



GARDEN DIFFICULTIES AND HOW TO MEET 



THEM 



DROUGHT AND WHAT TO Do ABOUT IT 



Probably the greatest anxiety of the gardener will be about 

 the water-supply. The delicately clad maiden, who, watering- 

 pot in hand, walks in the garden in the cool of the day and 

 sprinkles lightly the plants, is a pleasing vision and one which 

 has always been dear to the poets, but a gardener has scant 

 use for her. The watering at evening is well enough, and the 

 sprinkling always pleasant to the leaves, but daily sprinkling 

 as a means of giving the roots a drink is an invention of the 

 serpent and one of the things he would surely have taught Eve 

 when he set about spoiling her gardening in Paradise. 



In the first place, the best preventive of suffering from 

 drought lies not in the watering-pot, but in the spade, in 

 deeply dug garden-beds which enable the plant roots to ex- 

 tend comfortably down where they can find food and mois- 

 ture and maintain a serene indifference to surface conditions. 



Another excellent preventive which also has nothing to do 

 with a watering-pot is a "ground mulch"; this is simply the 

 practice of keeping the soil loose and light on the surface of 

 the ground, preventing the too-rapid evaporation of moisture. 



Rhododendrons and azaleas, especially those of the first 

 year's planting, benefit greatly by being given a summer mulch 

 that is, a layer of dead leaves or other garden litter some 

 three inches deep. It is a thing they have in their own homes, 



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