Gardening for Amateurs 



255 



or, better still, from a shed where a supply has 

 been stored under cover so as to be in a nice 

 dry, friable, or crumbly condition. Severe 

 frost is not expected before Christmas, but as 

 one gets into December it is as well to be pre- 

 pared for anything that may happen in the 

 way of weather. From a climatic point of 

 view December is probably the most un- 

 pleasant month in the year. It is generally 

 very wet, and is, of coarse, always very dark, 

 and if thick mist or fog be added to the dark- 

 ness and the rain, then is our 

 lot a most unhappy one, and 

 there can be little thought of 

 garden or of Roses. Decem- 

 ber is a month of which the 

 Rosarian is glad to see the 

 end. 



But it is no sooner over 

 than with the tuni of the 

 year and the coming of 

 January hope revives once 

 more and we begin to make 

 new plans for the spring and 

 the summer. As we get into 

 January frost generally be- 

 comes severe, but if proper 

 precautions have been taken 

 it should do more good than 

 harm. At the least it will 

 have the effect of making the 

 soil of the beds hard and 

 stiff, so that manure can be 

 wheeled upon it without diffi- 

 culty and without doing harm. 

 When the manure has been 

 spread on the surface of the 

 beds dig it in at the earliest 

 opportunity or cover it 

 slightly with soil brought from elsewhere. 

 Very shallow digging in will suffice ; what 

 in needed is to get a covering of soil 

 above the manure, otherwise a large 

 part of the ammonia and other important 

 chemical constituents will escape into the 

 atmosphere, and, incidentally, cause an un- 

 pleasant odour to pervade the garden. 

 When, a year or two ago, I wrote about this 

 matter in The Gardener, my attention was 

 drawn afterwards to some disparaging re- 

 marks made with regard to this advice by a 

 writer in another paper. I need hardly say 

 that I adhere to the opinion then expressed, 



that leaving manure to lie uncovered on the 

 surface is both wasteful and objectionable in 

 a garden, but not necessarily so in a field, 

 where the cost of labour is often the govern- 

 ing factor in such a matter. 



I recall reading, more than twenty-five 

 years ago, the statements of a chemist who 

 exposed fresh horse-manure to the air with a 

 roof covering to keep off the rain. He found, 

 if I remember rightly, that in eighty-seven 

 days the manure lost one-third of its weight, 



A bowl of garden roses. 



and included in this loss was the whole, or 

 nearly the whole, of the ammonia. He 

 found also by experiment that a very thin 

 covering of soil prevented the escape of the 

 ammonia and other evaporative substances 

 into the air, really, of course, by absorbing 

 them into the soil. A covering of one-eighth 

 or one-quarter of an inch was found sufficient 

 to effect this, though I do not recommend so 

 thin a covering as that. This must surely be 

 a more economical way of using manure, and 

 it is beyond doubt a pleasanter and more 

 wholesome method. 



Planting in Winter. Roses may be 



