132 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



I do not know the cause, but think it must be due to a sour 

 condition of soil kept too shaded and moist. They are 

 planted all over the garden, and in sunny locations the plants 

 are healthy; elsewhere they are not. I mean to try a little lime 

 in the earth as a remedy. 



The cause of the auratum lily disappearing is said to be a 

 white mite that infests the scales. In foreign countries where 

 they are raised, the conditions are such that this is kept in 

 check, while it flourishes in America. A well drained sunny 

 situation, a rich soil with plenty of leaf mold in it, but no 

 fresh manure, the bulb well insulated by a handful of sand 

 directly about it when planted, give the auratum at least a 

 favorable environment. 



The Lilium Candidum is also subject to disease, and, as a 

 corrective, the bulbs should be powdered with sulphur before 

 planting. There are other specific diseases too numerous to 

 mention; apparently they are the appointed way that plants 

 pass out of this world, like the aster blight, due to the blue 

 aphis that attacks the tender roots, for which the specific is 

 wood ashes in the soil at the root; the carnation blight due to 

 a little worm that finds lodgment in the stem and has to be 

 burrowed out. Then there are plants that root near the sur- 

 face of the ground, and while they die if kept too wet, they 

 are also killed if the roots dry out or the hot sun strikes the 

 collar of the plant. 



Many of these peculiar requirements and conditions I have 

 tried to enumerate under their proper heads in the Appendix; 

 yet the treatment of plants can no more be generalized than 

 the treatment of children can. There are inherent capacities 

 and aptitudes that seem to demand certain environment, yet 

 at times plants adapt themselves in a marvelous way to quite 

 contrary ones. Evidently the great life energy is reaching out 

 as eagerly to produce ever higher types through plant forms 



