1889. 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



oil hand noxt season for stHMi. The lilK'ral use of 

 sectl is one of thesafe-jruants <tf siieecss, aiitl it is 

 usually much cheaper to g^ather selected seed 

 from your own vines than tt> buy. 



Hetuhfiinn's liuiih Lima. Well, if weeouid have 

 only one, either the old runnint^ sort or the new 

 bush \'ariety, we would not hesitate an instance 

 in our choice. And this choice would not lull 

 upon the Hush Lima either. And yet this latter 

 is not without value, especially for the home 

 grower. It is a number of days earlier tluui the 

 earliest of the Limas. It makes a neat, com- 

 pact and peeuliarly strong, stiff bush. It 

 blooms freely and sets well, and the pods being 

 close togrether in bunches or clustei"s,'it makes 

 easy picking. In quality it is as good as the 

 running Limas. All considered it fills a gap 

 very nicely, and the home grower will mosi 

 likely be pleased with it, even if it is small in 

 pod and IJcan, and perhaps somewhat mori' 

 tender than the pole sorts. We are gatherinD 

 quite a little seed, and shall i^iant it mon 

 largely ne.\t year. 



Tine Fiiiits. We have to record a failure 

 audit may relieve our conscience to confess 

 it. While we have our speculations in regflr<i 

 to the causes, and think we will be able to de- 

 duct some valuable lessons from this experi- 

 ence (to be told later), we deplore the fact, not 

 alone because we are very fond of Melons, 

 especially when they are so deUciously fine 

 as Emerald (Jem among the Musk sorts, and 

 Volga among the Water Melons; but still 

 more on account of the negative result of 

 our test. A few of the varieties named have"^' 

 managed to survive, and the superiority of 

 quality which we find indicated in the few 

 imperfect specimens of this year's crop, only 

 serves to make us long for the feasts we had of 

 them in ycai-s before. We shall again plant 

 Emerald Gem and Volga, and with as much con- 

 fidence as ever. Our illustration gives cross 

 section of a fair specimen of the Volga, which 

 is a favorite with us. The seeds are small, 

 but much more easily removed from the flesh, 

 and the latter crisp, melting, sweet and delicious. 

 What an insipid, coarse, tough thing is the aver- 

 age Water Melon bought at the fruit stores when 

 compared with a well-ripened Volga fresh from 

 the garden. 



Of Squashes we also planted quite an assort- 

 ment of varieties without being able to show 

 better results than in Melons. We may say, 

 however, that the little Red China Squash, which 

 we here illustrate, pleases us very much, espec- 

 ially for its attractive color and productiveness; 

 but for general uses it will take something very 

 different from it to crowd out such sorts as Hub- 

 bard, Pike's Peak, etc. 



The general failure of vine fruits this season is 

 a serious blow to many people in this vicinity 

 who make a buiness of raising Pickles for market. 

 One of our nearest neighbors planted two acres, 

 and in spite of all pains and reijeated re-plantings 



Wintering Flowering Plants. 



At the time when the lirst fall frosts.arrive, 

 many whose yards are yet gay "with Gera- 

 iiiiiins anil other tender tlowering plants, 

 see no way to carry ii nood stock of tlie.se 

 plants through winter, and thus preserve 

 them for another year's service. Regret- 

 fully, but resignedly, their favorites are 

 given up to die. A correspondent of; New 

 York Tribune rcciiioiuends a place (which 



ing water in the pit to render the air racist 

 by the steam it gives off. In a pit of this 

 size we do not wish to winter many large 

 plants, and so we take slips of Geranium 

 and other large plants, and late in the 

 season put them in four inch pots. 



THE RED CHINA SQUASH. 



could not succeed in raising Pickles enough to 

 supply his own table, let alone to sell. Fortun- 

 ately sueh a fatal season does not occur so very 

 frequently. We may do better another vear. 



Peppers Riilting. Not a single perfect speci- 

 men of Kuby King and Golden Upright Pepper on 

 our vines this season. What's the matter with 

 the Peppers? The disease begins at the blossom 

 end and works its way toward the stem end. At 

 the same time Procopp's Giant, Celestial and Hy- 

 brids, and our unnamed long sweet sort are en- 

 tirely free from disease. We cannot account 

 for these phenomena. 



THE VOLGA WATERMELON. 



he has used for 10 years) for such cases, 

 where houses cannot conveniently be kept 

 warm enough to carry plants through the 

 winter, or where a large family and small 

 rooms make it impractical to try to keep 

 them. Undoubtedly many amateurs could 

 enjoy keeping plants by arranging a pit 

 similar to the one described as follows: 



Our dining room is over the cellar, and 

 has a south window. Immediately under 

 this window I made an e.xcavation 4? ,3 feet 

 wide, 9 feet long and as deep as the cellar 

 lacking 3 feet. The cellar window was 

 taken out and the space enlarged so that a 

 small door was hung, which enables us to 

 enter our pit from the cellar without dis- 

 turbing the sash. Our pit is boarded up 

 but if making another I would lay a brick 

 wall, as the boards rot and must be renewed 

 in a few years. We use three sash to cover 

 it, and the upper end is placed against the 

 house as high as possible and not to inter- 

 fere with the dining room window. To 

 make this pit frost-proof we place a frame 

 of inch boards 3 feet distant from it on all 

 sides, except next the house, and each fall 

 bring a load of fresh sawdust and fill this 

 space. On cold nights an old carpet is spread 

 over the glass, and whenever mercury is 

 liable to go to zero, or below, we set a com- 

 mon kerosene lamp In the pit. For several 

 years we kept an old iron kettle in it, and on 

 cold night would carry down a peck or so 

 of live coals just before going to bed. This 

 was objectionable as coals not only gave off 

 gas, and a dust from the ashes settled on 

 the plants, but the heat was irregular ; for 

 when first put in the coals would raise the 

 Itemperature too high, and then before 

 morning they would die, and in very cold 

 weather, 'mercury by morning would be 

 near freezing point. 



The lamp will keep a uniform temper- 

 ature, and for a pit the size of mine ( 4i< by 

 9 feet), a single lamp will suffice, even with 

 a zero temperature outside. We have had 

 several nights with mercury from 8 to 14 

 degrees below zero, and then we put in a 

 second lamp. We do not try to keep flowers 

 blooming during the coldest weather, btit 

 in February and March they can be pushed 

 forward, and thus Daisies, Pansies, Violets, 

 Hyacinths and other hardy bloomers are 

 made to contribute flowers in abundance. 

 It is well occasionally to set a kettle of boil- 



Strawberries from Pot Layers. 



FETEK HENDERSON. 



In your September issue, M. B. Faxon 

 says that " The claim that Strawberries 

 grown by this method will produce a full 

 crop the next season after planting should 

 be taken with a grain of allowance." It 

 is evident that Mr. Faxon never gave this 

 system a fair trial, or he surely never 

 would have said so. That he is not famil- 

 iar with the process is evident when he 

 says that: "Nearly all growers use a 

 mixture in potting which becomes as 

 hard as a cobble stone." Allow me to 

 say that any grower that knows his busi- 

 ness, simply uses the soil in which the 

 Strawberries are growing; a competent 

 workman will layer in pots two thousand 

 plants in a day, if he went to the more 

 than useless trouble of preparing the soil, 

 he would not put down half that number. 

 We have adopted and recommended to 

 our patrons the pot-layer system for 

 Strawberries for over twenty years, and 

 with such satisfactory restilts that from 

 a beginning of a few thousand a year, 

 our sales of pot-grown Strawberry plants 

 now reach over a quarter of a mUlion plants 

 annually. But in this, like many other 

 garden operations, a few minor details are 

 essential to success. 



We begin placing the layers in 2 inch pots 

 here about the end of June, or as soon as 

 the fruit has been gathered; the soil is soft- 

 ened with a trowel, and the flower pots 

 filled with soil is sunk to the surface level, 

 the joint of the Strawberry layer is placed 

 in the center of the pot and kept in place by 

 a small stone. This stone besides keeping 

 the layer in place marks where the pot has 

 been sunk so that when the plants have be- 

 come rooted, they can be seen to be taken 

 up. In ordinary weather, plants layered 

 will be rooted sufficiently to be taken up in 

 about twelve days. Men new to business 

 generally lift them up direct from the ground 

 and ship them in that condition, and as a 

 consequence, they are almost certain to be 

 unsatisfactory, for the layer being just de- 

 tached from the parent stem, in this state 

 is but little better than an ordinary layer. 

 What should always be done is to lift the 

 layers up, place the pots closely together, 

 water and shade for a few days, when the 

 plants will have filled the pots with roots. 

 In this condition, they can be shipped safely 

 to be three days in transit, and if properly 

 planted, not one plant in five hundred need 

 be lost. We have yearly planted an acre of 

 Strawberry plants from pot-grown layers in 

 this way for upwards of twenty years, and 

 never yet have failed to obtain as much 

 weight of fruit per plant in nine or ten 

 months (that is plants set from pot-layers in 

 August or September, fruiting in .June of 

 next year) as from plants that were one year 

 older set from ordinary layers. 



We only grow these Strawberries for our 

 own use and to obtain stock from which to get 

 pot-layers, but if we grew Strawberries for 

 the fruit for sale, we would adopt no other 

 method !is the large berries obtained from 

 these young nine or ten months old plants 

 far surpasses that from older plantations. 



Where the pot-layer system has failed has 

 been in cases where the operator was inex- 

 perienced in handling plants, few fruit grow- 

 ers have such experience as we too well 

 know, for when we have occasion to order 

 sorts that we happen to run short of, in 

 most cases, the plants received come in mis- 

 erable condition, mainly for the reason that 



