August, 1915 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



19 



The hose can be made in 75 foot lengths fastened 

 together with nipples and couplings forming lengths 

 of 150 or 225 feet, and with sufficient pressure will 

 water an area sixteen feet wide at one time. As 

 soon as the hose is emptied and moved the previous 

 holes close, making it necessary to use the "spatter" 

 each time the hose is changed. If sediment or slime 

 does not aid in closing the holes it is better to use 

 drill soaked in boiling linseed oil but dried before 

 using. 



For irrigating large lawns it is especially useful and 

 a large area can be watered daily. The hose is cheap 

 costing about four cents per foot made up two 

 inches in diameter, and this is the best size. It lasts 

 ten to twelve weeks when used constantly; the 

 watering can be done thoroughly, and irregular 

 areas can be watered perfectly with but little waste 

 of water and but little over-lapping of spray. 



Grant's Pass, Oregon. O. I. Gregg. 



Dahlias for Hot Dry Sites 



THE inquiry in the December number, 1914, 

 of The Garden Magazine about dahlias at 

 Landsowne, Pa., which did not bloom the past 

 season, is of special interest to me, as the dahlia 

 is a hobby of mine. 



The inquirer does not state how many varieties 

 were included in the fifty roots, nor whether, planted 

 a foot apart in the bed, they were in one long row 

 fifty feet long, or in a bed say six by twelve feet. 

 The two kinds of planting may look alike by 

 arithmetic, but they are another thing as to sun- 

 shine and circulation of air. 



I am in the Susquehanna River Valley here, with 

 much of the hot summer climate and low elevation 

 of Lansdowne, though I am off the lime soil which 

 so enriches the southern portion of the State. Be- 

 cause of our gravelly soil — said to be 90 feet verti- 

 cally, under my garden, and undermined by collieries 

 below that to an extent that long since dried up 

 wells — I have developed a collection of dahlias 

 that like hot dry weather for flowering. Some of 

 them are German, like Vater Rhein, Riesen Edel- 

 weiss and Frigga; some English, like Phil May, 

 Star, Foxhunter, Bernard Shaw, Floradora, Mme, 

 de Zoete, Auburn Beauty, F. W. Barnes, Gigantea, 

 Rev. A. Hall, Dorothy, Whirlwind; many French, 

 those from Lyons doing especially well; and a 

 stock of seedlings of my own which are highly 

 colored, large, and free-blooming above all other 

 qualities. I do not care whether a dahlia is tall or 

 dwarf, as I stake all dahlias regularly every season. 



The summer of 1914 was an abnormally wet one, 

 cool for a week at a time with intense hot waves 

 between times. It was everything my dahlias 

 were not accustomed to, nor chosen for. They grew 

 slowly, and held back their flowering. But after 

 two weeks of sunshine and heat in September, they 

 began to flower and did as well as usual until the 

 last few days of October, when they were frosted. 

 I scattered nitrate of soda on the ground around the 

 hills about September 1st to try to stimulate growth, 

 and at the same time reduced the mass of side 

 branches that had grown up on the bushes. The 

 stimulant and pruning seemed to start them off, and 

 I never had a better crop than from that time on. 



Mr. Davis had a stock of varieties well acclimated 

 and suited by constitution to an ordinary hot 

 summer in Lansdowne, they naturally sulked 

 under the infliction of a Scotch summer last year. 

 Then, if he planted too closely, the wet new ground 

 between the plants, already rather low in air supply, 

 became more soggy in the dense shade of the plants, 

 and reduced the number of surface rootlets. If the 

 tubers were rather deeply set to begin with, this 

 was doubly bad. If his bed gave him heavy hills 

 of a few large fat potatoes each at digging time, 

 this last is certainly the case. 



As to cutting out the main sprout at two feet 

 high, I am aware that many great growers, and 

 notably Mr. Maurice Fuld, advocate it as producing 

 flowers and as making stakes unnecessary. I differ 

 with the principle, which seems to me like cutting 

 the top out of a sugar maple to make the tree give 

 more run of sap — an overturning of the habits of 

 the plant without getting the benefit sought for. 

 I have always got better flowers, more flowers, and 

 earlier flowers, from bushes which ran their main 

 stem, properly staked, as high as suited them. I 

 remove five out of every six lateral shoots on the 

 main stem, and roughly the same proportion on 

 established branches and later root shoots; and 

 this rubbing out, like disbudding on the chrysan- 

 themum, stimulates bloom and growth. In a dry, 

 hot year, the setback from cutting down the main 

 stem would not have deprived the owner of all 

 flowers, only of his earlier crop; but in the wet cold 

 of this summer, the plants received such a check 

 that they turned to making leaves and accumulat- 

 ing starch in their thick roots. Any tuberous 

 flowering plant which has been developed to the 

 neglect and partial atrophy of its seeding powers — ■ 

 begonias, gloxinias, dahlias, etc. — occasionally goes 

 on strike under wrong climatic conditions or accident 

 to its circulation and puts its chlorophyll cells hard 

 at work making extra starch instead of the diversi- 

 fied chemistry of flower production. 



Lastly, the plants may not have been staked, and 

 may suffered a "green fracture" of the supporting 

 fibres in the main stem just above the ground. 

 When wind or rain overbalances a young bush not 

 properly tied up, there results first a narrowed, hard, 

 flattened stem at the point of injury, further marked 

 afterward by the formation of a swollen collar or 

 ring of woody ribbing cells. This collar is as bad 

 for' the free circulation of sap as if the plant were 

 compelled to grow through an iron washer put over 

 the young shoot at the level of the ground. There 

 are few sap cells in the ring tissues, and those in- 

 elastic. When accident has formed such a ring on 

 any of my dahlia plants, I throw the strength of 

 the bush to the first root shoot that shows above the 

 soil, and in two or three prunings destroy all the 

 first top, letting the second take all the growth. In 

 two weeks, I have a better plant than the first, and 

 can count on free flowering because of free circula- 

 tion of sap. 



Your Lansdowne inquirer does not say whether 

 his plants were allowed to saw around on their bases 

 in every windstorm or not; but if they were, I 

 venture to guess that the strangling ring of wood 

 formed on each stalk in the process of healing and 

 reinforcing strained areas. I have seen plants 



where that cause alone ended growth and flowering. 

 And on a lime soil, the dahlia tends to harden its 

 tissues anyway, as I know from administering lime 

 or potash, or both, to imported varieties which grew 

 too "soft" here in my limeless garden their first 

 season. 



Pittston, Pa. E. S. Johnson. 



Improving Strawberries de Luxe 



IT IS a problem to know how to raise large 

 strawberries year after year. The tendency is 

 for the plant to deteriorate as it grows older; the 

 berry becomes smaller and smaller and the quality 

 poorer no matter what the variety or how large or 

 vigorous when established. The matter of renewing 

 plants is expensive and one must lose the use of the 

 ground for a year. To overcome this we have used a 

 method of selection that has proven successful. 



During the bearing season all the plants are 

 watched. Beside those bearing fruit of good size 

 and quality a stake is set and from these new plants 

 are taken. The new plants are set in pots and only 

 those runners are allowed to develop which have 

 started earliest, thus giving strength that would 

 otherwise be distributed among both late and early 

 runners. 



At the latter part of the bearing season a number 

 of small pots are filled with a mixture of two parts 

 good loam and one part compost and as the early 

 runners are ready to root a pot is set in the ground 

 and the runner trained into it. Many runners 

 develop daily in a small bed yet it takes but a short 

 time to pot them and one is well repaid for the work. 

 From four to six weeks after these runners are potted 

 a mass of roots will be developed and the top will 

 cover the pot. Then they are ready to trans- 

 plant. 



The land, if a new bed is started, is plowed or 

 spaded and well harrowed. A furrow is made and 

 about four inches of well rotted compost placed in 

 the bottom of it. This is refilled with earth and a 

 low ridge made where the plants are set. The plants 

 must be kept moist until they begin to grow and it is 

 best to transplant during rainy weather for this 

 reason. If they have rooted properly the}- will come 

 out of the pot in nice shape and in a few weeks make 

 a fine growth. We feel no hesitation in pulling up a 

 plant which bears small berries knowing by ex- 

 perience that the new bed will bring results. We 

 have found that yields were increased by following 

 this method and our berries are about twice the size 

 of the average. 



Fowlertown, Ind. W. C. Smith. 



Foliage for Sweet Peas 



A BOUQUET of flowers without foliage appears 

 incomplete; the more natural the arrangement 

 of the leaves the more artistic the effect. With 

 sweet peas one cannot use the foliage without 

 destroying a great part of the plant; so I plant a few- 

 green peas so that I can use their foliage with the 

 sweet peas, the tendrils and leaves greatly enhancing 

 the beauty of the bouquet. 

 Traverse City, Michigan. Mary Rutxer. 



Scenes in the gardens of J. H. Ellison, on Long Island, planted largely from The Garden Magazine's teachings. The approach has a succession of irises and peonie 

 feature. The formal treatment shows the beginnings of a planting of lilies and pyrethrums with borders of roses surrounding 



its leading 



