98 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



October, 1917 



cooler treatment are lettuce, endive, cauli- 

 flower, beet, carrot, pea, spinach, water-cress, 

 mustard, cress, radish, parsley, mint, and chives. 

 These will do well in a night temperature of 

 45-5° degrees. 



USING UP ODD SPACE 



Additional crops which can be grown below 

 the benches include mushrooms, chicory, as- 

 paragus, and rhubarb. The mushrooms will 

 do very well in a cool house, provided the beds 

 are protected from drip and darkened. The 

 asparagus and rhubarb roots succeed well on 

 the floor at the warmest end of the house, the 

 rhubarb and chicory should be darkened for 

 best results. Asparagus roots can be dug from 

 the garden for forcing or bought from a 

 specialist in vegetable roots for forcing. Sev- 

 eral batches can be started during the winter, 

 the earliest can go in about November 20th. 

 Simply cover the roots with soil and keep well 

 watered. Asparagus can be cut in two to three 

 weeks from planting and can be cut from 

 profitably for four or five weeks. Then start 

 another lot of roots. 



Soil for the Benches 



[" TSE a mixture of 'garden loam (pasture 

 *-' loam if you have it) and well rotted man- 

 ure, two parts of the former to one part of the 

 latter. Mix thoroughly and leave the rougher 

 portions at the bottom of the benches. The 

 loam must be well enriched, as you will want 

 to plant two, or possibly three, crops in it dur- 

 ing the year. Cow manure is specially good 

 for light soil, horse manure for heavier loam. 



Lettuces do best in light soil and the heading 

 varieties like May King and Hittinger's Bel- 

 mont must have it; the leafy kinds succeed 

 well in heavy soil. The crop requires from 

 io to 1 8 weeks to mature from seed according 

 to the season. The young plants should be 

 transplanted into flats before being placed in 

 the benches, 8 to io inches apart each way. 

 Special care is needed in watering. The large 

 market growers who have solid beds soak well 

 at planting time and this usually carries the 

 crop to maturity if the soil is stirred from time 

 to time. A lettuce crop planted before Sep- 

 tember 15th will be headed up by Thanks- 

 giving. If a further batch of young plants is 

 then ready, they will come in about the end of 

 February; before planting second crops the 

 soil must be well forked over and some addi- 

 tional rotted manure or pulverized sheep 

 manure added. Too much water will cause 

 both rot and sun scald on greenhouse lettuces. 



Radishes mature in from 24 to 40 days ac- 

 cording to the season. Scarlet Globe and 

 Forcing Deep Scarlet Turnip are desirable var- 

 ieties. 



Beets and Carrots are better not started 

 until the end of January, at which time a 

 sowing of French Scarlet Horn Carrot can 

 be made. Sow the carrots where they are 

 to mature, they do not transplant as well as 

 beets. Crosby's Egyptian Turnip Beet is un- 

 excelled for indoor culture. Seed can be sown 

 and seedlings pricked out in the bench 3 to 4 

 inches apart. Both roots and foliage make 

 good food. 



Peas. Do you want a late crop of peas? 

 Then sow a row of Buttercup, Little Marvel, or 

 Nott's Excelsior now. Outdoors they will 

 mildew when sown late, indoors they will not. 

 Then again with a greenhouse you can make a 

 sowing in January or even February and have 

 a crop long before the outdoor ones. Give 

 them good soil, supports, a little water and feed 



well and you will be agreeably surprised at the 

 picking you will get from a small space. 



String Beans succeed only in a warm house 

 through the cold winter months, but a sowing 

 made before September 15th will give a pick- 

 ing in about 50 days. Wonder of France, 

 Abundance, and Triumph-of-the-Frames are 

 splendid indoor varieties. Sowings in a warm 

 division can be made right through the winter 

 and in 8-inch pots splendid crops may be had, 

 but early in April they can be sown in the cool 

 house and such a sowing will long precede 

 those made in the open, and greenhouse beans, 

 as indeed other vegetables have a delicate and 

 delicious flavor. 



Greenhouse cauliflowers are vastly superior 

 to such as are grown outdoors where they are 

 often subjected to severe droughts. Make a 

 sowing of Kronks Perfection Forcing Erfurt in 

 November. These will give nice heads toward 

 the end of March. Sown at Christmas heads 

 will be ready from the middle of April on- 

 ward. Cauliflowers need a rich soil and an 

 abundant water supply; as the heads appear 

 break a couple of leaves over them to keep 

 them white. Allow plants 12x15 inches space. 



A few roots of parsley, mint, and chives along 

 the edging of the bench will prove useful. 



Spinach. A sowing of Victoria at the cool 

 end of the house will give a picking of leaves 

 for a long time. After April 1st a sowing of 

 New Zealand Spinach will come along rapidly 

 and if you can give it 55 degrees at night you 

 can sow about the end of September and have 

 abundant picking all winter long. 



What Not to Do 



' 1 ''HE average small grower would be well 

 ■*■ advised not to endeavor to fruit tomatoes 

 and cucumbers in winter, but by sowing at 

 Christmas a fine spring crop may be had. 



Tomatoes need a drier atmosphere than cu- 

 cumbers and it would be better not to grow 

 the two together. Allow tomatoes 18 inches 

 apart in the row, train to a single stem, rub- 

 bing off all side laterals and shortening back 

 the leaves a little, hand pollination of the 

 flowers until April will ensure a better set. 

 Splendid greenhouse varieties are Stirling 

 Castle, Comet, Lister's Prolific and Carter's 

 Sunrise. 



The English frame cucumber of which Im- 

 proved Telegraph and Rockford are good types 

 will be found very prolific; plants when fruiting 

 need copious water supplies and liberal appli- 

 cations of liquid manure if long handsome fruits 

 are wanted. 



Various Salads 



SOWINGS of white mustard and curled 

 cress may be made at frequent intervals 

 where these are liked in salads. Sow the seeds 

 broadcast and very thickly and do not cover 

 at all. Water freely and cut before the plants 

 make rough leaves; then stir up the ground and 

 sow again. 



Water cress can be grown in the cool end of 

 the house, it does not need to be grown in 

 water, but will thrive so long as it has an 

 abundant supply of moisture at the roots. 

 Do not forget that valuable crops may be 

 grown below as well as above the benches and 

 the space can be used for water cress. 



Where Mushrooms Will Grow 



A/TUSH ROOMS will do well in a tempera- 

 •*• '■*■ ture as low as 45 to 50 degrees at night, 

 provided the beds are made below the benches 

 where there are no heating pipes. It is as use- 



less to plant them near heating pipes as in a dry, 

 furnace-heated cellar. 



Fresh horse manure with one fourth as much 

 loam added and well mixed and turned over un- 

 til the rank heat has subsided must be used. 

 Dampen the manure if at all dry, when made 

 up it should be just moist enough to squeeze to- 

 gether without exuding water. Make the 

 beds 9 inches thick, pound or tramp very 

 hard. When the heat subsides to 90 degrees 

 spawn a foot apart, each way, using pieces of 

 spawn the size of an English walnut, do not 

 press the manure heavily over these pieces of 

 spawn for 8 to 10 days. Then firm the whole 

 bed well, cover with two inches of loam, firm 

 again and leave alone until mushrooms appear 

 which may be as early as 4 weeks but will 

 average 6 to 7 weeks. But don't get down- 

 hearted even then if nothing appears as 

 occasionally mushrooms will come abundantly 

 after 12 to 15 weeks. They will crop profit- 

 ably for 10 to 12 weeks and after that the 

 manure can be used as a mulch on the benches 

 or for incorporating with the soil. 



Summer Use of the House 



A GREENHOUSE devoted to vegetables 

 need never be empty, even through the 

 summer, as crops of cucumbers, tomatoes and 

 muskmelons will succeed finely in them until 

 it is time to clear them out for the next season's 

 planting of winter crops. 



Other crops than those named can be grown 

 under glass and the house can be used effi- 

 ciently to start sweet corn, lima beans, egg 

 plants, peppers, okra, tomatoes, melons, onions, 

 celery, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, which will 

 yield much sooner than if started in the garden. 



General Attention to Pests 



tpUMIGATION once a week with nico- 

 *■ fume paper or one of the nicotine ex- 

 tracts evaporated will keep aphides and other 

 pests in check. Spraying with nicotine is not to 

 be recommended for vegetable crops indoors. 

 A soap spray will help control white fly. For 

 red spider, which comes with a too arid atmos- 

 phere, force of water from the hose or garden 

 pump is the best remedy. Carefully pick off 

 any leaf-eating caterpillars and lay a poisoned 

 mash for cutworms. For mice try a little 

 white arsenic mixed with burnt meal and 

 slightly moistened. 



Don't get discouraged because a few pests 

 appear. There would be less charm in grow- 

 ing crops if there were no foes to fight nor 

 diseases to combat. These may sometimes 

 give us a bad quarter of an hour, but if it were 

 all plain sailing we would lose our alertness 

 and watchful care and crops would be less 

 bountiful than they are to-day. 



Color of Pansies and Hot Weather. — I 

 suppose that other people must have observed 

 that yellow Pansies will blossom all summer, 

 while blue and violet ones will stop off as soon 

 as the steady warm weather sets in. I had 

 envied a friend this season and last because in 

 his garden the Pansies are as bright (though 

 not quite as large), at the end of August as they 

 were in the Spring, while mine died down early 

 in July. Then it came to me that mine were 

 mostly dark colors, while the others were all 

 yellow. I also remembered that it was the 

 same last summer, though both plots were 

 changed, except that the colors had not been. 

 What is the philosophy of this ? And how can 

 one handle the Pansy so that all the colors 

 will thrive in hot weather? I recall more than 

 one plot of yellow ones that are now in full 

 bloom, but none of the darker colors.— John 

 W. Chamberlin, Buffalo, N. Y. 



