The Garden Magazine 



Vol. VI— No. 6 



Published Monthly 



JANUARY, 1908 



J One Dollar a Year 

 I Fifteen Cents a Copy 



[For the purpose of reckoning dates, New York, is 

 generally taken as a standard. Allow six days' difference 

 for every hundred miles of latitude.] 



How to Economize 



HOW much did your family pay for 

 vegetables from May i to Decem- 

 ber 31, 1907? Can you not save $25.00 

 to $100.00 by raising all you need, even to 

 the potatoes and other roots for next winter's 

 supply ? 



A hundred dollars was saved by Mr. 

 Charles A. Hartley of Ohio, who had a 

 garden of a little more than one-third of an 

 acre. (See The Garden Magazine, Volume 

 I, page 279.) 



A profit of 1452 per cent, was made by 

 Mr. Robert Dale, of Indiana, whose garden 

 cost $1.00 and measured only 540 square 

 feet. (Volume V, page 30.) 



Ten minutes a day enabled Miss Angell, 

 of New York, to raise vegetables worth 



$12.55 on a pl ot on ly J 5 x 3° ft- (Vol- 

 ume III, page 71.) 



Every bit of soil you have may yield three 

 cents' worth of vegetables a square foot, or say 

 $25.00 for a mere strip 22 x 34 ft., if you 

 follow the methods described by Mr. W. F. 

 Fairbrother. (Volume II, page 268.) 



Could you not save $5.00 on tomatoes, 

 celery, eggplants, and peppers by having a 

 hotbed? 



By raising your own plants you would 

 save several dollars and you might get your 

 tomatoes to bear a month earlier, because 

 you could minimize the shock of trans- 

 planting. A single sash costs only $3.00 

 and The Garden Magazine tells you how 

 to make a hotbed out of home material in 

 Volume III, page 76. 



But, it won't do any good to say, " Oh, 

 yes, I'll have a better garden this year, " and 

 then dismiss the matter until next spring. 

 You can't have a better garden unless you 

 have a better plan and the best time to plan 

 a garden is right after the holidays. It 's 

 more fun then and you can do a better job. 



Your success will depend chiefly upon 



whether you succeed in avoiding the 

 spring rush. The best scheme we know of 

 for doing that is the "check list" published 

 in The Garden Magazine, Volume III, page 

 129. This classifies the whole work of mak- 

 ing a garden by giving fifty numbered items, 

 so that you may cross out the items that do 

 not concern you and check off the others as 

 fast as you get them done. This will save 

 you hiring unnecessary labor. 



Just how to plan a vegetable garden is 

 told in Volume V, page 137, where the ten 

 successive steps you ought to take are fully 

 described. This will protect you from 

 planting too much of one thing and not 

 enough of another. 



You can save a good deal by getting the 

 varieties that will be the most productive 

 for your climate and conditions. The only 

 way you can get this information is by com- 

 paring many catalogues while you have the 

 leisure. A good way to do is to get a packet 

 of postals and write to every seedsman whose 

 advertisement in The Garden Magazine 

 attracts you. Of two varieties of tomato 

 seed each costing ten cents a package, one 

 may vield a bushel of tomatoes more than 

 the other. 



SMALL ECONOMIES WORTH WHILE 



Save all your wood ashes in a dry place. 

 Unleached hard-wood ashes will cost you 

 about' $2.25 a barrel, plus delivery. Use 

 wood ashes to fertilize your flowers. They 

 help to control the aster disease and some 

 insect troubles. 



Save all your coal ashes. They contain 

 no plant food but are excellent for lighten- 

 ing heavy soils. Many a kitchen garden 

 has been made more productive by their use. 

 Get a dustless sifter that will separate the 

 good coal in a hurry. 



Whenever you have a furnace or 

 stove cleaned out, save all the soot 

 if soft coal is used. Imported Scotch 

 soft coal soot costs about $4.00 for 

 a bag of 100 pounds. It is a valuable fer- 

 tilizer and insecticide. It discourages grubs 

 and cut worms from attacking radishes and 

 onions and cabbages. Scatter a light top 

 dressing of it next spring around plants and 

 see if it does not repel insects that hide in 

 the ground by day and those that lay eggs 

 near the roots of vegetable plants. 



Save all the nitrogen in stable manure. 

 It is worth $300.00 a ton. Keep it covered, 

 so the nitrogen will not wash away. Don't 

 allow manure to accumulate unless it can 

 be forked over twice a week or often enough to 

 prevent the escape of ammonia. Haul it out 

 to the vegetable garden as fast as it accum- 

 ulates, unless the ground is so soft as to be 

 damaged by traveling over it. 



Save your tools. If they rust they will 

 break. Go down cellar now; clean, oil, 

 and sharpen them; and they will do more 

 work with less effort and in less time. 



Save your fruit trees and berry bushes. 

 Assume that the San Jose scale is killing 

 them, unless you have seen pictures of it 

 like those in Volume I, at page 22,andaresure 

 it is not on your place. The best way for 

 the amateur to kill San Jose scale by whole- 

 sale methods is to spray fruit trees and 

 bushes with one of the so-called "soluble 

 oils" during the winter. These can be had 

 at local seed stores and you will find them 

 advertised in every catalogue. The lime- 

 sulphur compound can also be bought ready 

 made. A gallon of either costs about $1.00 

 and will make about forty gallons of spraying 

 material. The best spraying outfit for ama- 

 teurs costs about $7.50 and a bucket pump 

 about $4.00. But if you can't afford this, 

 and have only a few bushes, get an old whisk 

 broom and throw the stuff over the plants. 



A WORD TO NEW READERS 



Thousands of people will see The Garden 

 Magazine for the first time during the 

 ten days before Christmas and will won- 

 der why this number contains nothing 

 appropriate for the holidays — no sug- 

 gestions of appropriate gifts for - lovers of 

 gardening, no pictures of new decorative 

 material or new ways of using old favorites. 

 All these things were published in the 

 December number, which may be just what 

 you need most now, because it tells how to 

 simplify Christmas and how to make Christ- 

 mas better. 



The reason why this magazine is pub- 

 lished so much earlier than others is that 

 you need at least a fortnight extra in which 

 to make plans and order the tools, seeds, 

 bulbs, plants and other materials suggested — 

 especially if you live in the South. 



Would not the truest economy be to get 

 a complete set of The Garden Magazine 

 from the beginning? The five volumes 

 would cost you $9.35 and would save you 

 that much in a single season, because they 

 would show you how to make your garden 

 produce $10.00 worth of vegetables more 

 than heretofore. Where can you get a better 

 working library for the amateur gardener ? 



It is surprising how many people see The 

 Garden Magazine for the first time and 

 straightway order all the back numbers. 

 To meet this demand we actually reset and re- 

 printed three numbers a year after they were 

 published! So far as we can learn this has 

 never before occurred in the history of 

 horticultural periodicals. Those sets that 

 cost $9.35 now, will probably be offered 

 for $25.00 by collectors five years from now. 



