io8 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



February, 



Ever the Same. 



God does not send us strange flowers every year; 

 When the Spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places. 

 The same dear things lift up the same fair faces. 

 The Violet is here. 



It all comes baclc, the odor, grace and hue, 

 Each sweet relation of its life repeated. 

 Nothing is lost, no looliing for is cheated; 

 It is the thing we knew. 



So after the death-winter it will be. 

 God will not put strange sights in heavenly places. 

 The old love will looii out from the old faces; 

 Veilchen, T shall have thee. 



—A. D. T. Whitney. 



The Tired Foot. 



The potter stood at his dally work. 



One patient foot on the ground; 

 The other with never slacking speed. 



Turning his swift wheel round. 

 Silent we stood beside him there, 



Watching his restless knee. 

 Till my friend said low in pitying voice. 



How tired his foot must be. 



The potter never paused in his work 



Shaping the wondrous thing; 

 'Twas only a common flower pot. 



But perfect in fashioning. 

 Slowly lie raised his patient eyes. 



With homely truth inspired: 

 •' No ma'am; It isn't the foot that kicks— 



The one that stands gets tired." 



— The Continent. 



If the winds have an alphabet. 



And the trees know it well, 

 Then it Is natural to suppose. 



That they can read and spell. 

 And when their boughs are swaying. 



Full of green leaves and bare. 

 They still are practising the art 



Of writing In the air. 



— Youth's Companion. 



Is the 1889 planting planned? 



Botany is a good winter study. 



Early orders secure early attention, 



A delightful art is plant propagation. 



Wait antil April to prune Evergreens. 



Plowing at Woodbanks on January 5th. 



We like to sow our Diantlius seeds early. 



There is a crimson Calla (Arum Palestinum). 



Cabbage succeeds remarkably on Clover sod. 



Have the Spring open on all pot plants clear 

 of insects. 



Peas can be giown with less manure than 

 most crops. 



An ounce of fresh Cabbage seed should give 

 2,000 plants, 



Wanted. More brief pointed notes of informa- 

 tion from subscribers. 



The commission seeds are abroad, seeking 

 whom they may defraud. 



Growing plants show their liking for these 

 longer days plainly enough. 



The robust Hyacinth candicans is well adapted 

 to pot culture, setting the bulbs now. 



The re-naming of varieties for commercial 

 advantage is the meanest kind of fraud. 



Look out for the Cinerarias when about to 

 fumigate; they'll not bear much smoke. 



Sow a little Hadish seed in the Parsnip row to 

 mark the line tor aiding early cultivation. 



If your Wax Plant (Hoya carjwsa) does not 

 bloom, too rich a soil or too much is the cause 

 most likely. 



Moderate dryness at the root is one condition 

 for securing the l>est colors in most variegated- 

 leaved plants. 



In choosing annuals as well bear in mind that 

 the blooms of Phlox Drummodi are rarely 

 marred by bad weather. 



These long evenings should give you time to 

 write out .some of your best ideas for the good of 

 the PopuijAR Gardening family. 



In your selections of small sized ornamental 

 trees don't overlook the Cork-barked Maple, 

 (.Acer cainpcstre ) Asa handsome, small cemetery 

 tree it stands without an equal. 



Christmas Boses- I protected my plants in a 

 very simple wa.v; four sticks with crooks in 

 them to support two pieces of scantling upon 

 which rested the sash secured by wire.— M. 



Would you have magnificent shrubs of the 

 Panicle-flowered ^Hydrangea the coming season'/ 

 Then prune severely back and thin out the 

 growth somewhat the coming spring, and 

 manure liberally. 



Camellia plants dislike drouth; I help matters 

 by suspending one or two good sized sponges in 

 the top of the tree and keeping them constantly 

 saturated with water.— Jtfrs. L. E. Perrine. 

 Orange County, JV. T. 



It is Vile Smelling Stuff. Bisulphide of carbon 

 has the endorsement of M. Pasteur as a superior 

 insecticide in the case of root lice of all kinds. 

 It is applied by puncturing the soil about the 

 roots and depositing a little of the article in 

 the hole formed. 



Bulbs at the Paris Exposition. The Holland 

 nurserymen, E. H. Krelage & Son mean to see to 

 it that Dutch bulbs are fairly represented at the 

 great exhibition of this year. Large beds of late 

 Tulips were planted last autumn with a view to 

 their being in blossom at the opening next May. 



Twenty-five Superior Dahlias. Mrs. Bunn, 

 Cupid, Miss Browning, Mrs. Langtry, Constance, 

 James Stephens, Purity, Marmaduke, Dawn, 

 Gladstone, Maud, John Dawkins, Bird of Roses, 

 Orient, Emotion, Peacemaker, Khedive, Polly 

 Landell, James Corker, Sappho, Picotee, Woman 

 in White, Magician.— E. P. Powell. 



Electric Light and Plants. Has any reader, 

 in this day of the wide use of electric light in 

 towns, studied the effects of this light on plants 

 that are brought within the near influence of its 

 rays '/ Would Tulips, for instance, close at night 

 under a strong electric light"/ Notes on this 

 subject in general would be welcome. 



Three common wild flowers which should be in 

 every garden: The Bloodroot, tianguinaria Can- 

 ademis, beautiful white flowers, handsome 

 foliage; the Liverwort, Hepatica triloba, blue 

 flowers, handsome leaves; the Wake Robin, 

 Trillium grandijlorum, large white flowers. 

 There is also a desirable crimson flowering 

 species of Trillium. 



A Veteran's View. When I peruse a copy of 

 this journal and compare it with those of a simi- 

 lar character fifty years ago, it shows the vast 

 progress made in that time. Why one number of 

 Popular Gardening and Fboit Growing is 

 a whole volume of information; it would be un- 

 just to the good cause for me to withhold what 

 little I can do for it.— Samuel Miller. 



Shipping Plants in Pots. The course of the 

 careful old lady who would have a distant floiist 

 ship in their pots the plants she ordered is not to 

 be commended. Need we say to our intelligent 

 readers why'/ An increase of the weight and 

 bulk of the shipping case to almost double; 

 extra labor in packing, and most important of 

 all, the average of plants can be packed to carry 

 with greater safety without pots than with. 



Easy Befrigeration. A subscriber who re- 

 cently visited Woodbanks told how he reduced 

 the temperature in his Apple cellar by some 

 degrees. He has a large rough box inside of each 

 window to reach to the floor and these he filled 

 with snow, packing it down. The cellar floor 

 being well drained no inconvenience was met 

 with from the melting snow, while the increased 

 moisture and dampness was good for the fruit. 



The Ailanthus for Bapid Growth. A writer 

 in Garden and Forest points out the ad^'antages 

 of this tree for rapid growth by saying that it 

 makes fuel twice as fast even on poor soil as do 

 any of our other trees of like value, including 

 the White Oak, Black Walnut and Birch, the 

 amount of ash left being remarkably small. The 

 proper way of avoiding the disagreeable flowers 

 is to propagate by root cuttings from trees 

 which do not blossom. 



The White Grape Niagara. From two year 

 old vines of this variety planted in llWB, I m 1887 

 gathered a tew very fine clusters and in 1888 had 

 the flnest lot of Grapes ever seen hereabouts, 

 many of the clusters weighing from 16 to 'M 

 ounces each. I have Delawares, Brightons, 

 Champions, Moore's Early, Dracat's Amber, 

 Empire State, Wyoming Red, Moyer (not yet 

 fruiting) and others and while all are good the 



Support Jor Flower in Glass. 



Niagara suits me best.— .4. A. HaUaday, 



Windham County, Vt. 



The Value of Carrots. The past season, from 

 eighteen rows, thirteen inches apart and 180 feet 

 long I harvested 105 bushels, making a rate of 

 1,300 bushels per acre worth 25 cents per bushel, 

 I gave a neighbor twelve bushels of Carrots for 

 ten of Oats. At this rate the yield of my plot 

 was equal to about 90 bushels of Oats. A care- 

 ful experienced feeder said that he would rather 

 give his horses eight quarts of Oats and four of 

 Carrots than twelve quarts of Oats per day, 

 while such as are not subjected to steady, hard 

 labor will do finely 

 on them alone. — 

 Fred.W.Card, Brad- 

 foril Counly, Pa. 



Earth Mulch for 

 Grape Vines. In 

 the fall of 1887 I 

 buried a part of my 

 vines, just before 

 the ground closed 

 for the winter, with 

 about eight inches 

 of dirt. Other near- 

 by vines were 

 treated the same, 

 except being cov- 

 ered with Spruce 

 boughs. Those that 

 were buried came 

 on vigorously when 

 taken out late in 

 the spring and the 

 abundance and 

 quality of the 

 fruit was convinc- 

 ing evidence that this was good winter treat- 

 ment. The yield of those under the boughs un- 

 covered at same time was about fifty per cent 

 less and the qualit,v was inferior in about the 

 same ratio.— J. C. Webster. Hartford Co., Ct. 



The Fruit of Ficus Bepens. Subscriber A. S. 

 Cox, a plant grower of longexperience, living in 

 Pennsylvania, teUs of a fine specimen of Ficus 

 repens or stipulata in his vicinity; this plant 

 covered the north wall of a greenhouse for a 

 space of nearly fifty square feet. What made it 

 specially interesting was the fact of the vine 

 (which as is well known is a member of the Fig 

 family) having on it four or five small Lemon- 

 shaped fruits of a pea green color. Our corre- 

 spondent asks whether the fruit is edible. A 

 reference to a list of the edible species of the Fig 

 does not find this one included; it is a shy bearer. 



The Quince tree cannot be at its best without 

 some intelligent pruning. Unlike other fruits 

 the Quince does not bear from buds that are 

 formed the year before, but on short spurs that 

 form the saraeseason Justin advance of the blos- 

 soms. To throw vigor into these spurs the 

 oldest branches should be pruned out except to 

 leave enough to give the tree a moderately full 

 top and all the long new shoots of the pre\ious 

 season be cut back to five or six buds apiece. 

 This is all the secret there is for pruning to pro- 

 duce fine fruit— fruit that will sell, when the 

 small stuff from unpruned trees will be 

 lacking a market. 



A Point in Growing Seedling Liliums. One of 



our observant correspondents writes: "It is 

 probable that many like myself have been disap- 

 pointed in the number of plants that seem to 

 come from Lily seed. I sowed several varieties 

 in March 1885 in pans and kept them in a warm 

 place but it was only late in summer that any 

 plants showed and then but a few. The pans 

 were allowed to stand around carelessly until a 

 year later when I dug the soil over and ffiund so 

 many small bulbs that I concluded that during 

 the two seasons nearly every seed must have 

 germinated. Tell your readers not to turn out 

 their Lily seed pans too soon." 



Transplanting Trees at Night. This course 

 finds an advocate in Professor E. Gale of Kansas, 

 according to report. We see no wisdom in it. 

 When trees are planted more light is needed for 

 the nice operation of working good soil among 

 the roots than a lantern or two could wel 1 afford. 

 Label reading, writing and attaching would also 

 be inconvenient not to mention the digging and 

 pruning of trees. If it is the best coui'se for the 

 orchardist or the amateur logically it must also 

 be for the nurseryman who sets tens of thous- 

 ands of young trees each season. What an absurd 

 sight a nursery would present during planting 

 season if night work was generally to prevail. 



