18 Pee (Ge RR) DEN MieAS Gare Zale Niet 
FEBRUARY, 1916 
and almost impossible to cure once you get them the 
habit. They soon come to depend upon you by keeping 
their feeding roots close to the surface. So if you begin to 
favor them early in the spring, keep it up regularly and thor- 
oughly all summer. Think of the work ahead of you and be 
slow in beginning. Just as the modern physician prevents 
_ disease rather than cures it, so the careful gardener will do 
all in his power to keep his dependent charges from a con- 
dition requiring the hose treatment. They must have -water 
to be healthy and luxuriant as we wish them to be, but the 
rains from above and the great storehouse below can be made 
to serve for most places in which a garden would be built. 
Heavy watering in dry weather is decidedly injurious to 
any crop, as many a fruit-grower and gardener has discov- 
ered. Very often results are better without it, as increased 
leaf and stem growth result, rather than better flowers and 
fruit. We are not wiser than Nature yet, and have much to 
learn about irrigation. 
Nature has in store plants for every conceivable situation, 
from the arid side of a sun-baked rock to the shady banks of 
the forest pool. This thought will be developed in a series of 
articles by Mr. Hamblin, to begin next month. We have 
little power to enforce our puny wills against the ever-active 
forces of Nature. If we wish this plant here and that there, 
consulting our own desires only, then we should be content, 
if the situation is unsuited to Nature, with the sickly droop- 
ing growths we obtain. 
Plants have varied ways of preparing for a dry season. 
Some bloom and ripen early, and escape it altogether; others 
store food and moisture in bulbs or tubers, or in thickened 
leaf and stem; while some send their roots down deeply for 
moisture. You never saw the wild Lupine wilt, no matter 
how sandy the soil in which it grows; neither can you by 
deep digging find the whole of its root. These four kinds 
of plants which expect a dry season and are prepared for it 
are the proper herbs for sun-baked spots; but if we wish to 
grow well the shallow-rooted habitants of shady wood or 
moist meadow in sunny, well-drained situations near our 
homes we are working at cross purposes with Nature. Ex- 
pecting then no help from her, we take the responsibility 
upon ourselves. And after all is not the essence of really 
gardening the finding out of the thing that will flourish 
abundantly with a minimum of care under the conditions at 
hand? 
4 THIS craving for surface drink is a bad habit in plants 
EXPN 
THOSE gentlemen who are engaged in investigations 
4 and experiments are forever telling us something really 
new. It is undoubtedly a fashion of so many of the 
purely practical people to deride—facetiously it may be— 
the efforts of these laboratory folks, quite oblivious of the 
fact that they are to-day, and every day, actually basing 
many of their “practical” acts on the earlier demonstrations 
of these same men. Gardeners in America have indeed much 
cause to be thankful for the things that have been dug out 
by the microscope and test tube. Many of the discoveries are 
merely passed by as “interesting” because their direct appli- 
cation to the practical economy of the garden is not imme- 
diately apparent. Later on the correlated facts are gathered 
together and a new course of practice evolves with more 
satisfactory results to the grower. Yet but little of the 
actual credit due is accorded to those whose proven work, 
looking behind the scenes as it were, has been the means of 
causing the change. 
fungus, bacteria, or insect) that the work of the investi- 
gator is most observed. Spraying and fumigating have 
become so general nowadays that the idea of good gardening 
without waging an intelligent war on the pests of disease is 
hardly conceivable. And yet it is but a very few years ago 
that the man who seriously sprayed was regarded somewhat 
suspiciously by his friends. To-day it is the man who doesn’t 
spray who is likely to be called to account; and not only 
because of his own mental makeup but also because he is 
looked upon as a stumbling block to the march of community 
interest. More and more in the country as in the town is a 
man coming to realize that he does not, can not, live for 
himself alone, nor by himself. A man’s every action has its 
reaction on his neighbors. And gardening teaches this 
4 IT IS especially in the field of diseases (whether by 
‘lesson in a very decided way. There are thousands more 
gardeners now than there were ten years ago. Whole com- 
munities have awakened to the garden stimulus and are 
making better homes and better citizens.. Gardens make for 
neighborlike interest in what is going on next door. Socia- 
bility grows out of the garden sympathy and soon a local 
pride is developed and. POS Tene 
EPR 
ONE of the most recent announcements of progress with 
plant disease concerns the dreaded wilt of cucumbers— 
a disease that baffles all-attempts at remedy, once it has 
shown itself in the affected plant. There was only one other 
real bother of cucumbers—the: striped cucumber beetle— 
and as it now appears the beetle is résponsible for the whole 
thing. Destroy the beetles, or prevent them from attacking 
the plants and then there will be no wilt. The wilt disease 
is bacterial, but according to the report in the Journal of 
Agricultural Research it cannot enter the plant except 
through the bite of the beetle. That hibernating beetles can 
carry the wilt germ through the winter and directly affect 
the young plants the following season seems to have been 
clearly proven. 
carries wilt during the growing season from infested to 
other plants. In all cages from which beetles were ex- 
cluded the plants remained free from the disease in both 
fields, although wilt-infested plants were growing all around 
these cages. On the other hand, wilt was found in the cages 
only when the striped cucumber beetle had gained access to 
the plants. In one cage, supposed to be free from beetles, 
wilt was observed just starting on the tip leaf of one plant 
at a point gnawed by a beetle. Careful search of this cage 
disclosed a striped beetle. After the beetle had been removed 
and the one wilted plant had been taken out, no further signs 
of the disease appeared in that cage. 
All hibernating beetles do not necessarily carry the disease 
over the winter but only some of those which presumably 
have fed during the previous season upon wilted plants 
infect the next year’s planting. 
BPNASSD 
& THUS is cleared up one more of the mysterious diseases 
3 THE experiments established absolutely that the beetle 
that trouble our garden crops. But there still remain 
quite a number of others that will surely excite the at- 
tention of our readers this coming season. Every season, as 
long back as our memory runs, disappointed enthusiasts have 
written letters asking for an explanation of certain ever- 
present troubles, as for example, the “larkspur blacks,” that 
strange “blight of the annual aster,” to name the most com- 
mon. Unfortunately, neither the cause nor the remedy have 
been discovered. Yet we do not despair. Fire blight of 
pears, wilt of peony, and such like, now well understood, were 
equal mysteries a few years ago. Little by little the sum of 
our knowledge increases and the gardener to-day is far better 
equipped to fight the battle for healthy plants than was his 
father. The world moves! 
EXPN 
WE RETURN our thanks to those readers (both old and 
new) who have the goodness to write letters to us about 
the contents of the magazine. Such letters are always 
welcome. Perhaps the average reader does not realize how 
much he can accomplish in helping to mould future issues of 
the magazine by an occasional word of suggestion or encour- 
agement. Won’t you resolve now to write at least one letter 
this year. If the trend of things seems to be going awry as 
you see it; if you are not finding in THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
just what you feel you ought to get in it, write to us. Hqually 
when you find the kind of article that you do like, write to us, 
so that we may be encouraged to present other articles of 
that general type. The magazine is, indeed, made for its 
readers, and they can have what the majority seem to want. 
And, besides, it is gratifying to learn of a successful effort. 
It is like the applause that is accorded to the actor—by that 
token he knows that he has reached his audience, and his 
work improves. Won’t you let the Editor know when, and 
how, he reaches you? 
