The Garden Magazine 
ed Von SOS 
MARCH, 1916 
NuMBER 2 
RE YOU ready? Gardening is a race against time and 
often against unfavorable conditions. The “plenty- 
of-time” gardener never has the earliest radishes and 
peas, or the finest roses and asters. He may say that 
he doesn’t care: that the extra early varieties are no good, 
anyway; but later he complains about the bad luck he is 
having with bugs—because he is not prepared to fight them 
any more than he was to get his early seeds into the ground 
at the first possible opportunity. Gardening is a series of 
hundred-yard dashes, without any time for training or 
“making-up” in between. When you have to stop this week 
to do what you should have done last week, you are only 
doubling and trebling next week’s work, for weeds and bugs, 
like time and tide, wait for no man—or even woman! The 
consequence is that some things which you honestly planned 
and expected to do have to be slighted, and, at the end of the 
season, poor old General Bad-Luck will have the responsi- 
bility for it all again laid on his shoulders. 
begin before the end of this month? We are—we think 
justifiably—proud of the plans we have made to help you 
have more beautiful and more efficient gardens. But it will 
make little difference how enthusiastic you may get over a 
new idea in landscape planting, or of increasing the quality 
and yield of your vegetables, unless the common, prosaic, 
fundamentals are attended to. We cannot do it for you. We 
cannot even get you enthusiastic about that. All we can do 
is to remind you emphatically—which is the purpose of these 
paragraphs—of its vital importance. 
Are your plans definitely made? Some one has described 
art as “the science of omitting.” The art of gardening is no 
exception. Every time you look through a catalogue or a 
magazine, you probably get a dozen suggestions which you 
would like to put into operation in your own garden. Do you 
know what you are going to leave out—what not to attempt? 
That is the secret of succeeding with what you do attempt. 
Make your plans definite and not over-ambitious. 
Are your seeds bought? It is remarkable how many gar- 
deners wait until the last moment, and suffer delay or buy 
seeds from some local store. Seeds sold in this way are on 
the whole not nearly so reliable as those purchased direct 
from seedsmen, and the selection of varieties is decidedly 
limited. 
-Are your plants arranged for? Whether you grow them 
yourself or buy them, vou should know by this time just what 
you will need, and have them well started or engaged. In the 
latter case select personally, if possible, from some local 
grower. The only way to be sure of getting the best is to 
select them several weeks ahead, before they have been 
“picked over.” Better still, if you have a coldframe, get them 
a week or two in advance, and give them plenty of room and 
the best attention, so that you will have them on hand in the 
poe of condition when conditions are favorable for setting 
out. 
Have you procured the fertilizers needed? ‘There is not 
room here to go deeply into the fertilizer question. But prac- 
tically every garden, even if it has been manured liberally, 
will be benefited by a generous application of high-grade fer- 
tilizer, analyzing four per cent. of nitrogen, eight per cent. of 
available phosphoric acid, and ten per cent. of potash. You 
4 ARE YOU ready for this year’s garden race, which will 
may not be able to find that analysis on the market this year. 
To make up for a deficiency below these figures, add: For 
nitrogen, nitrate of soda; for potash, muriate or sulphate of 
potash; or give a generous application of wood ashes in addi- 
tion to the fertilizer. The nitrate of soda, instead of being 
added to the mixture, may be applied in the form of light top- 
dressings. As to the amount, use one pound to each twenty 
to fifty square feet, in addition to manure, of high-grade 
mixed fertilizer. Of course, the more manure, the less fer- 
tilizer you will need. If no manure at all is available, at least 
the maximum amount of fertilizer mentioned should be used. 
Enrich the flower garden as well as the vegetable garden. 
Shrubs, fruit trees and ornamentals also appreciate fertiliz- 
ing as well as vegetables and flowers. In estimating the 
amount required for these, square the diameter of the circle 
covered by the “spread” of the branches; that is, for a cherry 
tree with a ten-foot span, allow fertilizer for one hundred 
square feet. In addition to this general or basic fertilizer, 
you should supply nitrate of soda, fine ground bone, coarse 
or knuckle bone, and if you can get it, genuine Peruvian 
guano (which is again on the market in limited quantities), 
or in lieu of that, dried blood or high-grade tankage. All of 
these things will keep for several seasons in a dry place. 
Manure for the small garden cannot be measured as defi- 
nitely as fertilizers. The best rule is to get all you can. 
There is practically no danger of getting too much. If some 
of it is light and full of straw, it will be well, in working it 
over, to fork this out and set it aside to use later for mulch- 
ing. If you cannot get good, well-rotted stable or barnyard 
manure, it will be better to get a substitute, rather than to 
try to make up by increasing the dose of commercial fer- 
tilizers, because it is desirable to have at least part of your 
plant food in organic forms. Commercial preparations of 
dried, cured and standardized stable and cattle manure may 
be purchased at a reasonable price. Sheep manure is very 
rich. A great part of the value of stable manure lies in the 
humus and the active organic bacteria which it contains. 
Sheep manure and commercial humus combined, make there- 
fore an excellent “‘synthetic’” manure, for a substitute. 
DBHee 
AFTER the beginner’s stage is passed, when the routine 
& work of seed sowing, etc., becomes not an end in itself 
but merely a detail in the proper development of the 
plant itself, the garden amateur looks with keen interest on 
the novelties of the season. To the thoroughgoing enthusiast, 
the “novelty section” is, indeed, the only good reason he has 
for looking through the annual catalogues. And what won- 
ders they offer! Novelty is, indeed, the spice of the garden, 
and each one of us should certainly grow some of these 
things—if only one new bean or pea, or Rose, or new hardy 
shrub—and then tell our garden friends about it. One such 
article we shall shortly publish tells of experiences with 
some of the newer perennials. It will be interesting reading. 
The usual Annual Novelty Picture feature in the April issue 
will contain portraits of most of the striking floral novelties 
of the season. There is a noticeable dearth of plant novelties 
among florists, but some strikingly attractive Roses and Car- 
nations, specially fitted for the private greenhouse, have 
appeared. 
