Asters to Follow Corn 
(ie problem for most of us who garden in 
a limited space—and we all seem to do so, 
no matter what is the size of the space—is to 
find a place for everything that we want to 
grow. In this connection it should be remem- 
bered that some cooperation between the veg- 
etable garden and the flower transplants is ad- 
vantageous. Therefore, if you have more late 
seeded Asters—designed to bloom in September 
after the black beetles are gone—than you haye 
immediate places for, you can, by a little in- 
genuity, arrange to have them follow second 
early sweet corn. This may be done by ad- 
vancing the seedlings to standard 5-inch clay 
pots, or better still—for convenience in hand- 
linge—to paper pots folded on a 4-inch cube and 
packed snugly into flats holding half a dozen or 
a dozen each. The paper pols, thus arranged 
and placed where they will be shaded in the 
afternoon, serve the purpose better, as they dry 
out less rapidly than the clay pots unless the 
latter are plunged into the earth—and it is 
often as difficult to find a place to plunge pots 
as it is a place to transplant seedlings. 
In early August, when further vegetable 
planting is restricted because of the lateness 
of the season, the place where a planting of 
corn has been removed may be utilized for the 
Asters. By that time they will be good sized 
lants, but the pots will care for them fairly 
well, and they can be transplanted without the 
least disturbance of the roots. Ordinarily, 
about the only effect of such transplanting is 
a stimulated growth, especially if at the time 
of transplanting they are watered with a solu- 
tion of about one teaspoonful of nitrate of soda 
to a gallon of water. Thus in September and 
early October you will have fine bloom in 
what would otherwise probably be a bare spot 
in the vegetable garden. 
Indiana. HortTuLus. 
Garden Value of Tree Toads 
HE garden being plagued by many insect © | 
pests, we determined last year to find out 
of how much use were tree toads. So we 
watched. Six of them took the veranda step 
as a sunning place and greedily swallowed 
green caterpillars, aphis, skip bugs and flies. 
Slugs they struck at and retired swiftly, rub- 
bing their mouths with their front feet. Three 
of them did this, so we believe the birds to be 
the only enemies of the slugs. Hairy cater- 
pales the toads would not tackle at all, nor 
ong-legged spiders. One family sunned itself 
on a Countess of Lonsdale Dahlia and some- 
times a large grasshopper would perch on the 
back of a toad. Bedups some other of THE 
GARDEN MAGAZINE readers have interesting 
things to relate of their experiences with tree 
toads. 
Vancouver, B. C. Auice C. F. PLUMMER. 
Preventing Cabbage Heads from Bursting 
OR a number of years I have each year 
grown an acre or two each of early and 
late cabbage, and have always suffered some 
loss by- heads bursting before they are cut. 
Two or three years ago I read an article on cab- 
bage growing wherein it was stated that the 
bursting of cabbage heads could be stopped, or 
revented, by severing the tap root at a few 
inches below the ground line, using a narrow 
spade, or a large knife, or a hatchet. Another 
way, less quickly done but yet practical and 
effective, the article said, was to twist the 
headed plant around a few times so that its 
feeding roots were loosened in the soil. 
With an acre or so of cabbages heading up 
it is impossible to market all heads just as 
soon as hard, so last year I tried each of these 
preventive measures on a few rows of par- 
ticularly fine heads. These were of early 
varieties—Winningstadt and Copenhagen Mar- 
ket. The result was that in a couple of days 
these heads were spongy and unmarketable 
withered much worse than eyen a soft head 
cut and stored in an ordinary cellar would be. 
Sure enough the treatment stopped the heads 
from bursting—and its other effects stopped me 
from resorting to preventive measures on any 
more. The withered heads are more completely 
unusable than split heads. 
The fact is, neither of these preventive 
measures are practical for use on early crop 
cabbage, at least, for you cannot sever the tap 
root or loosen the feeder roots and then leave 
the plant in the field exposed to the sun with- 
out causing it to so wilt that it is worthless 
after a couple of days. The only practical way 
of saving bursting heads is to cut at once and 
store in a cool cellar. Another recourse, but 
hardly to be recommended, is to select a strain 
not given to heading so hard as to burst. 
New York. L. Brown. 
The Worth of Old Box 
HESE two beautiful groups of Box have 
developed naturally during one hundred 
years of indifference and neglect. Branching 
as the Box does near the ground, these groups 
seemm to the casual observer to come from one 
root and, indeed, only on close examination is 
These two masses of Boxwood, more than one hun- 
dred years old, were recently sold for $200 each, for 
removal to a Hudson Valley garden 
it shown to be otherwise and that they prob- 
ably at one time edged small beds—the one a 
circle, the other of an oval form—which they 
have long ago overshadowed and obliterated. 
These clumps of Boxwood, one 19x18 ft., 
with a circumference of 52 feet, 8 feet high, the 
other 38 x 28 ft., 12 feet high, circumference 102 
feet, have recently been purchased ($200 was 
paid for each group) and will soon be removed 
to new quarters in the Hudson Valley. It is 
quite possible to transplant Boxwood even 
when of this size and age. 
West Grove, Pa. Eria K. BARNARD. 
As soon as I can can after cutting Poppies, I 
lunge the stems for a second into water that 
as been hard boiling within five minutes, and 
then put them in cold water. My blossoms last 
not less than twenty-four hours.—THomas D. 
JENKINS, Conn. 
303 
The Ubiquitous Helianthus 
OW that the seed houses are featuring the 
Helianthus or Miniature Sunflower in every 
catalogue I should like to tell of my experience 
with it. For some years I have been in the 
habit of each summer choosing haphazard 
some unfamiliar annual to experiment with, a 
custom I can recommend as being both amus- 
ing and highly instructive. Some four years 
ago it happened to be the Miniature Sunflower. 
I bought seeds of the thirteen varieties listed 
and, as they varied in height from twelve inches 
to seven feet, I thought they would do nicely 
for my border. The seeds came and were 
planted, covering a space of about four feet by 
fifty. 
A great many of the seeds failed to germi- 
nate, a fact in itself disappointing; and when 
the flowers came I was still more disappointed 
that I had so few when they were so pretty. 
They varied in color from the palest cream to 
golden brown. In shape they ran from the 
single blossom to the fullest pompon flowered. 
One variety, Orion, had all the qualities of a 
Cactus Dahlia in miniature. The plants grew 
quickly and made a splendid screen; the flowers 
were ideal for cutting. So much for the good 
points. 
That fall I cleared out the dead Helianthus 
stalks and filled the bed with bulbs. These 
were a complete failure, a failure I could not 
understand. The bulbs came from a reliable 
firm, the soil so far as I knew was good. The 
weather was mild and sunny. Yet the Tulips 
and Daffodils sent up weak little shoots which 
withered and died and came to nothing. I de- 
cided to investigate. The truth came out with 
the first shovelful of earth and Sunflower roots. 
From six inches under the surface to a depth 
of two feet, a solid mass of tubers from six to 
to eight inches long were interwoven, matted 
together until it was almost impossible to do 
anything with them. It meant going over that 
fifty feet of border inch by inch, tuber by tuber, 
almost, carting them away and burning them. 
I said tuber, but they were not really tubers 
nor yet rhizomes. They were more like running 
grass roots on a large scale, with leaf buds or 
eyes at intervals all the way along. They were 
anywhere up to ten inches long and about half 
an inch in diameter. One end would have a 
small tassel of fibre-like rootlets; the other 
armed with a hard sharp point strong enough 
to push through half rotten boards and from 
which the main stalk eventually grows. This 
is not the worst. The plant will grow readily 
from root cuttings; a piece no bigger than your 
thumb nail becomes a flourishing plant in a 
fortnight. Roots thrown on sunbaked clay and 
exposed to the full heat of the sun will send out 
roots and grow. The only roots that failed to 
grow were some thrown in the chicken run. I 
was surprised when they died; they are almost 
impossible to eradicate. Even an inch by inch 
search must miss some bits. 
It is my belief that the Miniature Sunflower 
is, if not an artichoke, a near relative, with the 
same manners and habits. The only difference 
is that the roots of the latter are true tubers. 
The plants and leaves are the same. 
That summer I raised quite successfully the 
things I planted and was not troubled by Sun- 
flowers beyond those which grew from small 
cuttings. I pulled these up and it was not 
until later that I discovered that pulling up 
the leaf stalks merely snaps them off where 
they join the roots, leaving the latter quite 
undamaged. They seemed so well done for I 
decided not to disturb my bulbs for another 
summer and, further than pulling up the shoots 
as fast as they appeared, I did nothing. Last 
spring marked the second battle, with the ad- 
vantage on my side that the roots were mostly 
near the surface. Eight apple boxes of them 
were burned at this time. In some places by 
the fence I found roots at a depth of two and a 
