The Garden Magazine 



Vol. II— No. 5 



Published Monthly 



DECEMBER, 1905 



; One Dollar a Year 

 1 Ten Cents a Copy 



[NOTE. — For full Table of Contents of this month's number 

 see page 207.] 



How to Make Your Plants 

 Survive This Winter 



AFTER the ground has frozen and the field 

 mice have found their winter quarters, 

 mulch your strawberry bed, hardy border of 

 perennials, newly planted trees, bulb beds, 

 broad-leaved evergreens, and anything that 

 you are afraid may be tender, especially 

 shallow-rooting plants, which are not killed 

 by zero weather but by alternate freezing 

 and thawing. 



OUTDOOR WORK FOR PLEASANT DAYS 



Saw dead limbs from trees. (For the right 

 and wrong way see March Garden Maga- 

 zine, page 66.) 



Examine every dying bush for the greatest 

 insect pest of modern times — the San Jose 

 scale. (If you want to be absolutely sure, 

 see February Garden Magazine, page 22.) 



Gather bagworms from arborvitas and 

 other evergreens, and destroy them. 



Bring in other cocoons for nature study. 



Store carrots and parsnips in the cellar 

 and cover with sand, to prevent wilting. 



Cover kale in exposed situations lightly 

 with coarse litter. 



Store onions for winter use in a dry, airy 

 place — not the cellar. Select only well 

 ripened absolutely dry bulbs, with no sus- 

 picion of disease. You can spread them out 

 thinly, on the barn floor, away from the walls, 



The most showy Christmas flowering plant is the 

 azalea. Its beauty soon passes, but it can be Kept 

 outdoors during next summer, and will flower again 



let them freeze solid, and then cover several 

 feet deep with hay or straw. 



Before the mercury falls to 22 F. give 

 celery its final covering, in trenches or pits. 



EARLY VEGETABLES WITHOUT GLASS 



You can have land ready to plant next 

 spring a fortnight or more before your neigh- 

 bors, if you will prepare a bed now by throw- 

 ing up high narrow ridges with deep furrows 

 between. 



HOW TO HAVE THE IMPOSSIBLE 



You can't have the best lilies if you wait 

 until spring and buy ordinary store bulbs, 

 for they will be rootless and shrivelled, and 

 may not bloom for a year, if at all. 



Contrariwise, the Japanese bulbs do not 

 reach this country until November. Some- 

 times you cannot get the bulbs until the 

 ground is frozen, but — 



You can keep the frost out of the ground 

 by simply heaping fresh manure upon your 

 proposed lily bed to the depth of a foot. 



Do this before the ground freezes and you 

 can plant lilies in December! 



LATITUDE OF RICHMOND, VA. 



Early potatoes can be planted in open 

 weather up to Christmas. 



Sow in coldframes radishes, lettuce and 

 beets — the easiest way to grow vegetables 

 for home use in winter. 



LATITUDE OF NEW ORLEANS 



Sow all hardy vegetables. 



Start the tender ones in spent hotbeds — 

 tomatoes, peppers, eggplants. 



Risk a few Irish potatoes, after the middle 

 of the month, whenever there is a good 

 chance to plant. 



Plant pecans and other nuts, to be budded 

 later with the best varieties. 



Camellias in bloom outdoors. Don't let 

 any one ruin your camellia trees by tearing 

 off small branches. Cut them properly. 



In the Greenhouse 



TF you want the most distinguished flowers 

 *■ ever shown at a lawn party or used for 

 temporary porch decoration, buy gloxinia 

 in November. They need to be potted bulbs 

 as quickly as you can get them. Among large, 

 tender, bell-shaped flowers they have no 

 equals in purity of reds and blues and beauty 

 of throat spotting. 



You can buy cyclamen bulbs in Novem- 

 ber and December for twenty cents which 

 will give you flowers next Christmas that 

 would cost you two or three dollars at the 

 florist's. 



If you want the most beautiful white 

 plumy flowers anyone can have at Easter, 



and before, order Astilbe Japonica now. 

 (Trade name, Spiraa Japonica.) 



If you want a floral surprise for your 

 friends next autumn, buy now a collection of 

 those extraordinary spidery flowers, the 

 nerines. 



If you want the pick of the world's best 

 gladioli, order your bulbs in December 

 instead of waiting till March. They are the 

 easiest bulbs to store; temperature makes little 

 difference if you keep them dry. To keep 

 them away from mice, put them in tin boxes 

 or, with home-grown bulbs, hang them, plant 

 and all if you like, from the rafters in the attic. 



The Fallen Leaves 



DON'T make the mistake of digging 

 autumn leaves into your garden this 

 fall. If you put in too many they will not 

 decay until spring, when the fermentation 

 will destroy the roots of plants. 



Make a compost heap of them. Warn 

 your man to keep the stones out of them 

 and next fall, when you come to make flower 

 beds and pot bulbs, you will bless the Garden 

 Magazine. Leaf mold isn't very rich in 

 plant food but it is the best thing in the world 

 for improving the texture of the soil, and 

 without good texture all the fertilizers in the 

 world are no good. 



We offer ten dollars for the best short illus- 

 trated account of results achieved by making 

 a compost heap of autumn leaves. It must be 

 by a beginner who makes his first compost 

 heap after reading this (see also page 232). 



The most hoIiday-liKe plant in its color effect is 

 the poinsettia {Euphorbia putchenima). It requires con- 

 siderable heat to get good bright-red bracts 



