130 GARDENING WITH BRAINS '^ 



insure your house, though you feel sure it won't 

 bum up? That season there were few families 

 in this neighborhood whose com didn't literally 

 bum up from the sun's heat. It was pitiable to 

 see it curl up its leaves (plants know a thing or 

 two) so as to have less surface exposed to the 

 desiccating sun, unfurling again when the grate- 

 ful coolness of the night and its dew came. 



If that summer was the least favorable for 

 gardening I have ever known, I remember one 

 summer in this neighborhood which was simply 

 ideal — no scorching heat, and rain regularly 

 whenever it was needed. There was only one 

 thing to mar my happiness — I had bought a 

 fine new hose and had no use for it what- 

 ever! 



In transplanting my Trianons and Icebergs 

 and Burbank chards I, of course, put them in 

 according to the intensive method, which ought 

 to be enforced on all gardeners by a new amend- 

 ment to the Constitution. That means scooping 

 out a hole with the trowel for each plant and 

 enriching the soil with a little dried hen or sheep 

 manure, with some crumbled cow manure or a 

 leaf mold below to make a cool summer bed for 

 the lowest roots. Of course the plants had 

 been started in the box in soil which adhered to 

 them tightly when wet. A naked root is hard 

 to transplant. Imagine my indignation one 

 day on Barclay Street, New York, when I saw 

 a salesman deliberately shake off all the soil 



