MARCH: FOURTH WEEK 77 



as deep as you can. If there is much trouble from this source 

 it will pay to repeat the operation several times during the 

 summer, keeping the roots cut off while they are small. 



In buying plants for your flower garden, keep in mind that 

 good health and a growing condition are to, be preferred 

 to size. Also resist the temptation to get one of each thing 

 rather than sticking to a few good sorts and colors. A bed 

 of geraniums of one solid color is very much more artistic 

 and effective than one in which shades of pink, red and 

 white are indiscriminately mixed. 



First Work in the Rose Garden 



The most important part of the year's work in the rose 

 garden must be attended to soon. When severe freezing 

 weather begins to let up and the frost is pretty well out of the 

 ground take the mulching off the rose bed and from around 

 the single plants. It is best not to do this all at once, how- 

 ever, but to take off a Httle at a time, leaving only so much 

 about the plants as can be readily worked under when the 

 soil between the plants is forked up. A dressing of fine bone 

 or bone flour and coarse bone mixed should be worked 

 deeply into the soil at this time. If the soil has been hilled 

 up round the stalks in the fall for winter protection it should 

 be leveled at this time. 



Spring Pruning of Roses 



As soon as the dormant buds or eyes start along the old 

 canes, or swell into leaf buds so large that you can tell where 

 there is deadwood, begin pruning. The hardy perpetual 

 sorts should be pruned first. Garden roses flower on new 

 wood, so in cutting back you are not destroying any possible 

 roses. The average gardener is much more likely to prune 

 too little than too much. Stronger varieties are pruned 

 less severely than those of a weaker habit of growth. If the 

 plants are lightly pruned they will bear many flowers of 

 small size. If moderately pruned they will bear fewer and 



