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Why You Should Sow an Ounce 
of Rock Cress Now 
O FAR as I know, the best plant for 
carpeting bulb beds, whether perma- 
nent or temporary, is the rock cress, Arabis 
albida — not alpina. It is perennial, easily 
raised from seeds, hides the dirt, does not 
rob the soil or otherwise interfere with the 
bulbs, blooms when they do, and, since its 
flowers are white they are sure to combine 
well with any other color. 
Every bulb bed ought to be covered with 
some shallow-rooted plant , because the 
soil is too much in evidence in April, and 
nothing is prettier than the rushing up of 
tulips or daffodils through a mossy sheet of 
How pretty your tulips and daffodils would look 
springing up through a carpet of white flowers like 
rock cress! 
foliage. For temporary beds, the carpeting 
plants should bloom at the same time with 
the bulbs, but for permanent beds they may 
bloom later. The favorites seem to be 
forget-me-nots, English daisies, and pansies. 
Why not get an ounce or more of rock 
cress seed now; sow it and have by the 
autumn all the plants you will need for 
covering your bulb beds and for edging 
portions of the shrubbery, the grape arbor, 
or hardy border? 
Almost every nurseryman, seedsman, and 
gardener calls rock cress Arabis alpina 
instead of albida, or if by chance he gets the 
latter, he puts the accent on the second 
syllable. Albida, of course, means whitish, 
referring doubtless to the woolly covering 
of the leaves. I have not yet seen any of the 
true alpina in cultivation and Wm. Robinson 
says it is inferior to albida. 
Albida has larger flowers than alpina, 
whiter foliage, the upper leaves eared at 
the base and a few coarse teeth near the tip 
of the leaf, whereas in alpina the whole 
leaf is toothed. 
New Jersey THomas McADAm. 
The rock cress has white, four-petaled flowers all 
through April 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
Garden Work in July 
es best way to keep a vegetable garden 
free from weeds in very hot weather 
is to use a wheel hoe in the cool of the morn- 
ing. It is a wholesale method, with the 
backache left out. Weeds uprooted then 
get baked all day by the sun. 
Get a pound or two of crimson clover 
now. Just as soon as one row of vegetables 
is past, out with it and put in crimson clover 
to fertilize your soil. It is a beautiful plant 
and makes nitrogen cheaper than you can 
buy it. Have a larger garden than you 
need and keep half of it in crimson clover 
all the time. Or use it in little patches, 
wherever a second crop is not needed. 
To make squashes and melons quit 
growing too lustily, and get down to the 
business of making flowers and fruit, pinch 
the ends of the vines and then dig in some 
unleached wood ashes. Potash is the most 
important fruit-making element. Wood 
ashes will also help you control insect pests 
on these vines 
Destroy your ‘strawberry plants after 
they have borne two crops. Pot runners 
before July rst. If you try to root them in 
the field after that you will get few berries 
next year or none. During July you can 
buy potted plants of new varieties. 
The most exasperating thing in a garden 
during late June (always excepting the hens) 
is a lot of backward vegetables, flowers or 
other plants. To make them hustle and 
catch up get a fifty-pound bag of nitrate of 
soda, put a teaspoonful of it on the soil near 
each plant and hoe it in. 
In three to five days after a rain or arti- 
ficial watering the leaves will be darker and 
will start to grow. 
One thing you may be sure of —no day 
laborer or child knows how to water plants. 
Sprinkling is worse than useless because it 
doesn’t reach the roots and the ground 
bakes next day. No boy realizes the trouble 
caused by washing the top soil away. 
Have you ever tried this scheme? Make 
with a hoe a basin of earth around the 
plant that needs water, then fill the basin 
and after the water has soaked down cover 
the wet space with dry soil. Then you are 
sure of your dust mulch, instead of forgetting 
it the next morning. 
FRUIT 
If you want great luscious peaches that 
will be a joy to yourself and your friends, 
now is the time to thin the fruits — after 
the “ June drop.” 
It is useless to expect good fruit without 
spraying. Spraying costs money and effort 
and is not the pleasantest business in the 
world, but when you have insured your 
trees you have a mighty virtuous feeling. 
You ought to have a spraying outfit and 
spray twice during July. In a wet season 
the foliage should be constantly coated 
with Bordeaux mixture, for one can rarely 
“cure” a fungous disease; prevention is 
the thing. Better begin now than wait 
until next spring. If you need advice ask 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE. 
Jury, 1908 
Cherries will spoil quickly unless you are 
careful not to break them from the stems. 
Don’t pick them when they are wet by rain 
or dew. 
Remove suckers from fruit trees as fast 
as they form. 
FLOWERS AND LAWN 
Surely you want a second crop of roses 
this year! Then you must be sure to cut 
back the hybrid perpetuals after the June 
bloom is over. Also you must cultivate and 
fertilize. Cut back about six or eight inches. 
If the meanest bird in creation is a cuckoo, 
the meanest plant is a rose sucker, for it 
does the cuckoo act. If you bought “ budded 
stock” this year, you will probably be 
rejoicing now in the innocence of your 
heart over the lusty growth that is springing 
up from the ground near one of your rose 
bushes. If you let it grow it will kill your 
precious variety and you will have nothing 
but a worthless wild rose. “Roses and How 
to Grow Them” tells all about such things. 
Your thumb is worth about twenty dollars 
during July for the purpose of pinching 
chrysanthemums, cosmos and _ dahlias. 
That’s the way to keep them from growing 
tall and straggly. Begin in June and make 
them compact, shapely, and full of flowers. 
What a natural mistake it is to feel that 
house plants are unnecessary in summer! 
Palms and other decorative plants are 
needed to make a house look cool, com- 
fortable and homelike. 
If you want to have the best geraniums 
you ever saw in your house next winter, you 
must select your plants now and see that 
they do not flower this summer. Otherwise 
they will produce few and small flowers this 
winter. Give them nitrate of soda to 
encourage a rank growth of foliage. Pinch 
out every truss of flowers at the earliest stage. 
If the plants make switch-like growths, 
pinch them back to get compact plants. 
The best part of gardening is having 
plenty of flowers to cut and give away. 
Incidentally the more you cut the more will 
follow, as a rule, for the greatest drain upon 
a plant’s energies is seed bearing. Cut 
every day in the cool of the morning and put 
the flowers into pails of water up to their 
necks. They will mean twice as much 
to your friends and last twice as long as if 
you cut them in the heat of the day. — 
Are you prepared for that rousing thunder- 
storm that is sure to cause havoc in the 
garden about the fourth of July? Think now 
of your dahlias wrenched into tatters, your 
gladioli flat on their faces in the mud, and 
your cosmos sprawling in all directions. 
Now is the time to stake all tender, top- 
heavy plants. Have something inconspic- 
uous, strong, neat, permanent. 
“Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” 
The kindest gardener is the one who thins 
vegetable and flower seedlings most cruelly. 
Only to the few is sufficient courage given. 
There ought to be a society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Plants. Watering 
without mulching afterward is not even 
half a kindness for the soil is sure to bake 
unless you stir it the morning after. 
eee 
