98 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



October, 1918 



Flower Bulks 



for Fall andMnter k 



- , DARWIN TULIPS SSS 



*in pots or Garden beds and bor- 

 ders. Huge flowers, long stems, 

 great range of colors. 

 40 large bulbs, many kinds mixed, p'paid $1.00 



S&„, FRENCH NARCISSUS 



Exquisite, fragrant, white indoor bloom- 

 ers in gravel and water or earth. 

 12 large bulbs, p'paid for 60c. 

 The above two offers for $1.50. 



AFFODILS The B ° lde " tru ™~ ^a 



> pets that herald 



; advent of spring. Sure, effective 

 dt pots indoors or garden use. 

 ' 40 large bulbs, mixed kinds, p'paid, $1.00 

 The above three offers for $2.50. 

 /CINTHS. IRISES, PAEONlES.all 

 ' other Bulbs and Plants. Descriptive and 

 Cultural Catalogue, 56 pages, FREE. 

 WINTER ONION SETS for the back yard, 

 plant now. 3 lbs. $1.00, prepaid. 



VAUGHAN'S SEED STORE 

 31-33 G. Randolph Street, Chicago. 

 41-43 G- Barclay Street, New York. 



am- /.."•.■ ■ . 



SEWAGE DISPOSAL 



The Aten System eliminates the 

 obnoxious cesspool. It is permanent, 

 self-oper ating,' and can be installed 

 by any one. Used by many prom- 

 inent people. Recommended 

 by well-known architects. .^- *. 



i*V\-v • is 



ATEN SEWAGE DISPOSAL CO., 286 Fifth Ave., New York City 



PLANT PEONIES NOW! 



There is no flower in the garden 

 yielding such a wealth of beauty as the 

 Peony. Beauty of form, richness of 

 coloring, delicate fragrance, vigor and 

 endurance are its endowments. Fall 

 is the time to plant your Peony Gar- 

 den. We have Peonies to suit all 

 tastes and all purses. Send for our 

 catalogue, which describes over five 

 hundred kinds; make your selection 

 now and next spring you will have 

 lovely blooms to reward you. 



The Wing Seed Co., Box 1626, Mechanicsburg, O. 



(The House of Quality and Moderate Prices) 



"HOW TO GROW ROSES"— Library Edition; iar pages— 16 in 

 natural colors. Not a catalogue. Price $i, refunded on $5 order 

 for plants. The Conard & Jones Co., Box 24, West Grove, Pa. 



HARDY PHLOX 



Are the peer in the garden, blooming during all sum- 

 mer until frost. We have the last word in phlox. 

 Send for list ; it's free. 



W. F. SCHMEISKE 



State Hospital Station 



Binghamton Box 11. New York 



I I Every Library must contain 

 ■ ^— * a complete Kipling — that 

 /\. fa, is if you plan to afford your 

 children the heritage of the Anglo- 

 Saxon family. 



Published by 



Doublcday, Page & Company 



Garden Cily, New York 



Growing Mushrooms for Profit 



THERE are several distinct varieties of 

 the cultivated mushroom which, based 

 upon color, may be distinguished as a 

 white, a brown, and an intermediate or 

 cream-gray variety. To these have been ap- 

 plied the trade names Alaska, Bohemia, and 

 Columbia, respectively. Mushroom growing 

 is not the easy, sure and simple process that we 

 are led to believe. It is more generally regarded 

 as a forcing crop, and it fits in well as a winter 

 crop for the market gardener. The consider- 

 able quantity of manure that must be secured 

 to get the best results can be used to good 

 advantage on the vegetable crops after com- 

 ing out of the mushroom beds. All that is 

 needed to produce mushrooms is a suitable 

 building, some stable manure and the mycel- 

 ium, or spawn. The building should be built 

 so that the air inside can be kept at a uniform 

 temperature of fifty to sixty degrees. There 

 should be provision for ventilation and the 

 darker the place the better. I would not 

 advise the use of the cellar beneath the house 

 for this purpose, because there is always some 

 odor and it usually winters quantities of flies. 

 However, mushrooms can be grown most con- 

 veniently in the greenhouse, under benches 

 where there are no pipes. If asparagus is not 

 forced — in itself a paying crop — the space 

 under the benches, which may thus be utilized, 

 is but of little use for other purposes, and 

 the income obtained from it is nearly all 



& am - 



Having the suitable building, the next thing 



needed is good spawn; the use of poor spawn is 

 one of the chief causes of failure. The only 

 test that can be made of spawn is to examine 

 it; as it takes an expert to tell whether the 

 spawn is fresh or stale, be sure to deal with a 

 reliable seedsman and keep the spawn in a 

 cool, dry place. The next important re- 

 quisite is horse stable manure. This should 

 be, if possible, from well fed animals that are 

 bedded with straw; it can rarely be secured 

 with enough moisture, so water should be 

 added. Take out all the strawy and coarse 

 parts using nothing but the fine portion of it. 

 Mix this with fresh loam, one part loam to two 

 parts manure, and add water. The manure is 



ready to be made up into beds when it gets the 

 color of strong coffee throughout and is so 

 damp that the moisture can be seen when a 

 handful is squeezed. There should not be 

 enough to drip. The manure will usually be 

 ready to put into the beds about a week or ten 

 days after it is secured. 



Construct the bed 8 to 10 inches deep, about 

 4 feet wide and as long as required, allowing 

 the prepared material to stand as it is. A 

 thermometer should be pushed down into the 

 manure and when the heat has dropped to 80 

 degrees, the bed should be spawned. Make 

 holes two or three inches deep, into which put 

 the spawn in pieces about as large as a hen's 

 egg. Cover the spawn and let it remain un- 

 disturbed for eight to ten days; then cover the 

 whole bed two inches deep with good garden 

 soil or loam, making it firm with the back of a 

 shovel or spade. Apply water only when the 

 soil is very dry. A covering of straw should be 

 put on the beds to insure more uniform con- 

 ditions. After the loam is applied there is 

 nothing further to be done except to see that as 

 nearly as possible a uniform temperature of 

 sixty degrees is maintained. Under suitable 

 conditions and with the exercise of constant 

 vigilance as to general cleanliness, the mush- 

 room bed will seldom fail as a result of diseases 

 or insect depredations. 



Mushrooms will appear in six or eight weeks, 

 and will continue more than two months. By 

 careful applications of water at the tempera- 

 ture of about 70 degrees, the season may be 

 prolonged. Under proper conditions mush- 

 rooms can be grown any season of the year. 

 The month of February usually brings best 

 market prices for the mushrooms. The yield 

 will vary from a few ounces to a pound per 

 square foot; the prices will range from twenty 

 cents to one dollar a pound. Mushrooms 

 come up in clusters and should be pulled from 

 the soil. Cut off the stem at the base and any 

 adhering soil is brushed from the cap. It is 

 not necessary to cut off the stem short, but the 

 market demands that there shall be a few long 

 shanks. Quart and 2-quart baskets, crated, 

 make the best packages. 



Maryland. Samuel H. Garekol. 



An Experiment and Two Observations: Dahlias, Beans, Potatoes 



WHEN the call came last spring for war 

 gardens I did not wish to throw away 

 my aristocratic Dahlias to make room 

 for common vegetables. I hesitated 

 but was not lost. I remembered how, when I 

 was a boy on a New Hampshire farm, we grew 

 beans between the hills of corn with no harm to 

 the corn. I thought, if corn why not Dahlias, 

 and planted pea beans between my Dahlias 

 with the result that I now have enough dry 

 beans to furnish me with the regulation New 

 England Sunday morning breakfast of baked 

 beans until next year's garden begins to yield. 

 We had to be a little more careful when cul- 

 tivating, but aside from that the beans were 

 a clear profit. 



The high cost of potatoes caused two of 

 my neighbors, one whose lot adjoins mine, 

 the other lives across the street, to try ex- 

 periments in planting. One, getting some 

 especially good potatoes from the market, 

 cut out eyes, from day to day as they were 

 cooked, and planted the eyes in common 

 garden soil in small flower pots and boxes 

 and kept them in the kitchen At planting 

 time the eyes, all of which had sprouted, some 



two or three inches, were transplanted to the 

 garden. When dug, the yield both in quan- 

 tity and quality was fully equal to that in 

 near-by gardens where seed potatoes had 

 been cut up and planted in the usual way. 

 The other neighbor cut off the seed end of 

 potatoes before cooking and placed the cut- 

 tings on a shelf in the cellar where they re- 

 mained several weeks and became quite dry 

 before they were planted, but they grew and 

 yielded as well as some planted in the usual 

 way in another part of the garden In addi- 

 tion to this, he found some potatoes that had 

 sprouted, with the feeding roots starting at 

 the base of the sprouts. He broke off the 

 sprouts close to the potato and planted them. 

 They grew and when dug yielded as many to 

 the hill as any he had planted. 



From these results it seems that one who 

 has a place where he can pot the eyes and 

 keep them until planting time, can not only 

 eat his potato and plant it too, but may get 

 new potatoes sooner than he could if he 

 planted in the usual way. 



Athol, Mass. 



E. V. Wilson. 



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