Meenas 
~The Garden Magazine 
Von Wien. 
PUBLISHED MONTHLY 
MAY, 1908 
} ONE DOLLAR A YEAR 
| FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY 
[For the purpose of reckoning dates, New York is 
generally taken as a standard. Allow six days’ difference 
for every hundred miles of latitude.] 
Before Danger of Frost Is Past 
FTER warm weather comes there is 
sure to bea frost. Find out from local 
records the latest date. Don’t plant tender 
vegetables or set out bedding plants before 
that. A checked plant never fully recovers. 
The tender vegetables are beans, corn, 
cucumbers, eggplants, melons, okra, pepper, 
pumpkin, squash, sweet potato and tomato. 
None cf these can stand even a light frost. 
It is all well enough to risk a few hills 
of corn and beans for the extra early crop, 
for if frost threatens you can cover the 
plants with newspapers. 
The only sure way to get early vegetables 
is to have hotbeds and coldframes. There’s 
no use in trying to rush the season by early 
planting out doors. 
KITCHEN GARDEN AND ORCHARD 
Whenever any young plant in vegetable or 
flower garden collapses suddenly in May or is 
eaten off close to the ground, cutworms 
are at work. Dig them up and kill them. 
If you grow cabbages, you will want to 
know how to insure them against cutworms. 
Order from your seedsmen a few dozen 
“cabbage collars,” explaining that you 
want the papers which market gardeners use 
by the thousands to foil cutworms. 
Look sharp for currant worms. 
them with hellebore. 
As soon as the petals fall from the apples 
and pears spray with Paris green, London 
Control 
purple, or other arsenical poison, for the 
codling moth and pear slug. Plant lice 
and psyllas appear on pear trees as soon as 
the leaves unfold and should be sprayed 
with kerosene emulsion. 
Many people consider arsenate of lead the 
best arsenical poison to use in spraying 
all chewing insects, because it never burns 
foliage and is not easily washed off by the 
rain. Slug shot is often used for the cab- 
bage worm. 
It often costs more to hire a man to cut 
brush for ‘peas than to buy wire trellis, 
which is neater. 
Did you know that there are varieties 
of cowpeas bred especially for human food ? 
If you have a big garden, why not sow half 
of it to cowpeas? ‘There is no cheaper way 
to fertilize it and, incidentally, you will get 
all the cowpeas you want for eating and 
for green manure next year. 
THE LAWN 
After the grass has gotten well started it 
is often unsafe to use nitrate of soda, but pul- 
verized sheep manure can be used then. 
Some people prefer it to stable manure for 
lawn dressing because it is free from odor 
and weed seeds. It comes in barrels and a 
barrel of it is said to contain as much plant 
food as four wagon loads of stable manure. 
The time to prune all spring blooming 
shrubs is just after they finish blooming. 
Only the autumn bloomers are to be pruned 
in early spring before the leaves appear. 
The grand old elms of New Jersey are 
dying wherever the elm leaf beetles are at 
work. Nowis the time tocombat them. Why 
not unite with your neighbors and get a 
spraying expert with a motor spray to 
save your trees? 
There is a tool for trimming and edging 
lawns which runs along like a lawn mower. 
Sharpening a lawn mower is a tedious 
job unless you have one of those sharpeners 
which you attach to the blade, so that the 
machine will sharpen itself as you push it 
along the sidewalk. It costs about a quarter. 
THE FLOWER GARDEN 
The most important flowers to study 
during May are the Darwin Cottage and other 
late tulips, pansies, German iris, hybrid 
azaleas, lilacs, and flowering crabs. ‘These 
are the ones that have the most varieties. 
Do you know where you can see the biggest 
collection of the flower you are the most 
interested in? If not, ask the Readers’ 
Service Department. After the spring rush 
is over, nurseries are glad to have visitors. 
Perhaps 90 per cent. of the flowering 
shrubs and trees bloom in June. 
The best scheme we know of for rear- 
ranging plants in a hardy border for unin- 
terrupted succession and perfect color 
harmony is the one explained in April, 1906, 
on page 145. 
Which of our native flowers do you 
suppose has given rise to the greatest num- 
ber of varieties in cultivation? Phlox 
undoubtedly. A Scotch nurseryman offers 
48 varieties. 
If you want to know all about propa- 
gating your own tulips from the offsets 
which you find now when taking up your 
early or bedding tulips, read THe GARDEN 
Macazine for November, 1906, page 190. 
The Baby Rambler is only a cluster rose 
and has small flowers, but so far as display 
is concerned it is the best of the bedding 
roses because it has a longer season of bloom 
than any other. It really gives a good show 
all summer and autumn till frost comes. 
The most “fun” in connection with flower- 
beds and window-boxes is not in compli- 
cated and freak designs but in getting novel 
plants. The shape of beds and window- 
boxes has to be conventional, but the plants 
in them ought every year to present a new 
picture. If you want a change from the 
everlasting coleus and cannas, consult the 
catalogues of the seedsmen who also offer 
tender plants for beds and boxes in varieties 
that local florists do not always have, e.g., 
moonyines, jasmines, gardenias, musk plant, 
thunbergias, browallias, sensitive plant, Oth- 
onna crasstfolia, Gazania splendens, etc. 
The latest novelty in veranda boxes is 
a self-watering flower-box said to require 
attention only twice a month. 
We have long been waiting for a chance 
to publish an extended article on “Plants 
for Shaded Places,” but have not yet been 
able to find the space. However, we shall 
be glad to put any facts we have at the dis- 
posal of those who are especially interested, 
and will take the pains to describe fully the 
problem they have to meet. 
THE SPRING-PLANTED BULBS 
Thousands of dcllars are squandered 
every spring on cheap lily bulbs and peony 
roots that lie dormant a year or never grow. 
People will never learn that these are best 
planted in the fall. If you must plant them 
_in the spring get big bulbs or big roots from 
a reliable dealer and pay a fair price or you 
will surely be disappointed. 
Gladioli are the most accommodating 
of the spring-planted bulbs. For July 
bloom they can be planted in April, or as 
soon as plowing begins and they can be 
had all through August and September by 
making one planting in May and another 
in June. The bulbs are so easily kept in 
storage that they have been planted as 
late as July 4th, blooming in late September 
and even in October after several light frosts. 
Of all the tender bulbs for spring planting 
the most important are gladioli, cannas, and 
dahlias. But there are a lot of other attrac- 
tive flowers in this class. The most inter- 
ing “round-up” of them that we know of 
is in THE GARDEN MAGAZINE for April and 
May, 1907, pages 156, 157, and 232-234. 
SAIS MEMS SST 
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