The Garden Magazine 



tTHE GARDEN year is almost over; where yesterday there 

 was a proud riot of midsummer beauty, to-day there is the first 

 faint whisper of coming winter in the belated group of autumn 

 flowers. The garden speaks to us of the past rather than the 

 present, and of the future rather than the past. For already we 

 are planning the blooms of to-morrow instead of setting ourselves 

 to mournful memories of faded blossoms. Now, while the spirit 

 of the garden is still holding us in its enchanted thrall is the time 

 to make use of that enthusiasm; when our imaginations are work- 

 ing rapid fire with visionary beauties, when the faithful earth lies 

 warm and ready to receive its green-leaved children, and when the 

 plants themselves are settling down for the long winter sleep. Now 

 is the time to reach for the learned writings and mark well their 

 sound advice on fall planting. And now is the time to take to 

 heart the words of the wise men, and busy ourselves with prepara- 

 tions for next year's garden. 



Fall planting has been slow of acceptance by the general garden 

 lover, because it seemed foolish to begin planting when all the earth 

 was preparing for a period of rest. Spring seemed to be ever so 

 much more the seasonable time, when there was a stir in the grow- 

 ing world, and a stir in the human heart that urged one forth among 

 green things. Then, when young men's thoughts were turning to 

 love, the gardener's were turning to the garden. He sat down with 

 bulky catalogues, and in a great rush sent off for some plants to set 

 in the earth. Impatiently he awaited their coming; hastily he set 

 them in their appointed places and watched them slowly recover. 



Disappointedly he saw the days pass with never a bloom, or 

 only scanty ones. Such is often the story with spring planting. It 

 is merely a question of education before fall planting will be ac- 

 cepted as the reasonable, the most beneficial, and the most satis- 

 factory in its results for the majority of plants. 



Anyone giving attention to the structure of plants must realize 

 what a severe shock and set-back it is for the system of the plant 

 to be dug up by the roots from the earth, shipped for a distance 

 without necessary moisture, and then transplanted in a new situa- 

 tion. After recovery from this experience, the plant must imme- 

 diately stretch forth its roots in search of food, and begin the 

 tremendous task of re-adjustment. It seems like heaping insult 

 on injury to ask the poor plant to perform still another office for 

 us, yet do we not expect it to grow apace and blossom forth in full 

 glory the very same season? That is what spring planting demands 

 of the plant; an immediate recovery and establishment, followed 

 by rapid growth and profuse bloom. But if the planting is done in 

 the faU of the year, there is a much better chance for the plant. It 

 is not retarded just at the time when its growth is quickening, but 

 it is dug up when the work for the year is drawing to a close and 

 the plant system is preparing to make itself comfortable for the 

 winter. If the plant is transferred at this season, it can make this 

 adjustment in the new surroundings before cold weather sets in, 

 and thus be prepared with the first days of spring to put all its 

 energy into new growth. There is no question of the superiority 

 of fall planting in this respect. It does indeed gain the planter 

 an entire season, as the bloom, the summer after fall planting will 

 be abundant. 



Spring planting also has the disadvantage of favoring later- 



blooming plants, for it is then too late for the earliest flowering 

 varieties. To renounce all the joys of the first spring beauties is a 

 great blow to any well-ordered garden. Think of missing all the 

 tribe of bulbs — the crocus, the tulip, the hyacinth — because we 

 have not used a little foresight and planned for their coming the 

 previous autumn. So it is with the early-blooming perennials — 

 the moss pinks like a sea of color; the deep blue shyness of the 

 violets; the dewy freshness of the yellow primulas; the exquisite 

 bells of the lily-of-the-valley — that whole host of little strangers 

 that are too often omitted from the garden borders. Can you 

 forego the golden bells of the forsythias, the blossoms of the dog- 

 wood, and the other spring-flowering shrubs this coming season? 

 Now is the time to get busy and plan for their reception. Before 

 the nippy days of Jack Frost come round in earnest your future 

 garden should be well on its way toward being planted out. 



* A QUALITY — fragrance — lacking in the general run of dahlia 

 •^^ types has been discovered in the peony-flowered section, and in 

 a way, credit for the discovery of this quality and the introduc- 

 tion of varieties embodying it has been given in Bailey's New 

 Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, to an American grower, 

 such grower listing in his catalogue a collection of five "new fragrant 

 peony-flowered dahlias." Four of these varieties are old friends 

 — Glory of Baarn, La Rainte, P. W. Janssen, and Queen Emma, 

 introductions of 1906 and 1907, and, strange to say, generally 

 catalogued before the grower with the nose for perfume listed 

 peony-flowered varieties at all. 



» HAS IT EVER occurred to you that the frequency with which 

 ^^ several beet seedlings spring up in one place — necessitating a 

 future thinning — is not a result of carelessness in sowing the 

 seed, but of the nature of the beet itself? The fact is that of average 

 beet seeds something over 95 per cent, is "multiple," that is, consists 

 of several germs massed together and giving rise when sown to 

 that many plants from practically the same point. Now whatever 

 interest that fact contains for scientists, it had a very real interest 

 for commercial sugar makers; for the price of sugar beets, their 

 raw material, depends on the cost of raising them and the more hand 

 weeding necessary the higher this cost. Therefore some time ago an 

 astute manufacturer urged an investigation of this multiple seed 

 proposition, which has resulted, according to an article in the Journal 

 of Heredity, in several important discoveries and expectations. 



It seems, for instance, that multiple germ seeds result when the 

 flowers develop in clusters; that in some cases the blossoms are 

 solitary and the resulting seed single germed; that this condition 

 exhibits characters common to inherited traits in general; and, 

 hence, that there is every reason to hope that by careful breeding 

 and selection a variety or type of beet can be produced that will 

 consistently yield only, or almost only, single germ seeds. 



At all events a few years' work has resulted in the production, in 

 a small experimental field of several hundred beet plants of which 

 fifty produced more than 25 per cent, single germ seeds; the next 



71 



