THE SCHOOL GARDEN. 



proper time.* Children can be taught in winter to raise 

 seeds in egg-shells and thumb pots to be planted out 

 in spring at the right time. 



School gardens are the only places where improve- 

 ments in the culture of the grape-vine by manuring, 

 pruning and other treatment can be well introduced. 



FRUIT CULTURE. 



Very special care should be bestowed upon fruit cul- 

 ture in the school gardens. This is as yet too little es- 

 teemed as a source of agricultural prosperity. The 

 school garden can further this interest by cultivating 

 valuable fruits, raising them from seed and thus accli- 

 mating foreign fruit, and making every region a fruit 

 growing one. The school garden should provide a nurs- 

 ery for trees cultivated from wild stock, and quinces, 

 which improve greatly by good care ; it should also con- 

 tain trellis fruit of all kinds. Where fruit culture is yet 

 scarcely known, the husbandman should learn that a 

 tree that can be bought for 10 neugroschen will soon 



* Small boxes made of hard burned clay for covering plants are made without 

 bottoms, and have a straight sloping roof, and an arrangement to hold the glass 

 safely in its place. Their chief use is to protect the plants from the winter's cold. 

 By the help of these, cauliflower, cabbage, savoy, salad and other kitchen plants, 

 can be wintered, if, in the autumn, the boxes are placed in rows two feet apart in 

 a protected place, and either seeded or planted, the spaces between the boxes 

 filled with leaves or straw-manure, and protected on the glass side with covering, 

 in severe frost. In the spring they can be used to protect tender plants that are 

 then set out, against night frost, rough wind and beating rain, or to lay over veg- 

 etables and flowering plants in the open field, and especially in gardens where 

 there are no hot beds. Most vegetables do better in them than in hot-beds, be- 

 cause in the latter plants are apt to be too much forced. They are particularly 

 useful for cucumbers and melons when first growing. They may also be used in 

 summer and autumn to bring forward the settings of woody plants, or to shade 

 seeds from the heat of the sun, from drought, from snakes, birds or cats, which 

 last trample down the beds. In winter they are useiul for plants that it is hard 

 to make grow, and that yet do not bear much moisture. They are easily handled. 

 The glass can be partially removed to let in air, a little from the ground. 



