Gardening for Amateurs 



Something You May Not Know 



TO Destroy Ants. Ants give much 

 trouble in some places. A simple cure 

 is to flood their haunts now and again 

 with water, and if hot water is used the 

 treatment is more reliable. A good poison 

 for them is to dissolve 1 oz. of the 

 commercial carbolic acid in 5 gal. of 

 water, and spray this in all places in- 

 fested by them ; a strong liquid insecticide 

 will also prove valuable. Where liquids 

 are inadmissible, a strong soil fumigant 

 like Vaporite or Kilogrub will soon eradi- 

 cate the pests. Should they infest the 

 flower borders, the " cure " must be selected 

 with discretion, and no better substances 

 can be chosen than any of the fumigants 

 mentioned or plenty of water. 



The Value of Green Refuse. Lawn 

 cuttings, soft green refuse, and pieces of 

 turf should be collected and either dug into 

 some vacant part of the garden, or mixed 

 with good horse, cow, or pig manure. In 

 this way the valuable organic matter in 

 these substances is made use of to increase 

 the supply of humus in the soil ; the manure 

 supply is also increased if the refuse is 

 mixed with the manure heap. Diseased 

 tissues are to be carefully removed and 

 burned, or else buried deeply in some vacant 

 soil in order to prevent the germs or spores 

 of disease attacking other plants in the 

 garden. 



To Make Blue Hydrangeas. The 

 ordinary Hydrangeas produce greenish, pink, 

 or white flowers, but it is comparatively 

 easy to produce trusses of beautiful blue 

 colour. When the soil is being prepared 

 for planting, work J oz. of sulphate of iron 

 or copperas into each square yard, or in- 

 corporate some of the sweepings and iron 

 filings from the smithy floor in the soil. 

 Hydrangeas grown in this will have blue 

 flowers. A better and easier plan is to 

 water the flowers every third day with water 

 containing 1 teaspoonful of alum to the 

 gallon ; this treatment should cease as the 

 buds begin to open. These methods of 

 obtaining blue Hydrangeas are much prac- 

 tised in Belgium and France, where it is 



found that the blue blossom has a readier 

 sale in the markets. 



House Ashes. House ashes or cinders 

 should be saved and utilised in the garden. 

 Where the garden is heavy or clayey 

 they can be spread on the surface and 

 dug into the soil ; they will then assist 

 the process of disintegration, opening 

 up the clay and helping, at the same 

 time, to aerate and drain the ground. 

 Fine gritty house ashes spread round 

 young plants will keep off slugs and 

 prevent them from doing damage. The 

 fine dusty matter from the fire may be 

 mixed with soot and used to dust the plants 

 for insecticidal purposes. The large cinders 

 should be used in the boiler fire. When 

 planting bushes of any kind in the garden 

 mix a little lime with the larger cinders and 

 place a good layer of these in the bottom 

 of the trench. This facilitates drainage, 

 preventing water from stagnating- round the 

 roots, and helps to keep pests from bur- 

 rowing up among the roots of the bush. 

 Clinkers, unless of the very finest, should 

 not be used in the garden. The manurial 

 value of cinders is practically nil. 



Use and Misuse of Sawdust. Owing 

 chiefly to the high price of straw, owners 

 of horses have taken to bedding their animals 

 with sawdust. From a manurial point of 

 view sawdust is far from satisfactory, be- 

 cause the wood decays slowly, and there is 

 strong encouragement for fungoid pests to 

 increase in the ground. It should never 

 be used in the garden, and if there are 

 shavings in the manure, they must be care- 

 fully removed. Sawdust spread round the 

 foot of the manure heap acts as a valuable 

 absorptive material ; it soaks up the rich 

 liquid which flows from the manure, and 

 if the sawdust is then collected in a small 

 bag and suspended in water the result will 

 be a liquid fertiliser. The sawdust may be 

 dried in the air and used a second time, but 

 its power of soaking up liquid is greatly 

 lessened. Sawdust may be soaked in paraffin 

 or insecticide and placed round the roots 

 of Carrots, Onions, etc., to keep off pests. 



