Planting by the Weather 



BRISTOW ADAMS 



"Every Man His Own Phenologist," Says this Professor Emphasizing the Principle that the Behavior of the Native Plants and 



Buds is a Sounder Guide for Planting Work Than a Fixed Date on a Calendar 





Observe the flowering of Japanese Clematis and so determine 

 the exact time for the operations of late summer 



THIS has nothing to do with humps and 

 hollows on the human head. The 

 ph-r-enologist takes care of them. The 

 ph-e-nologist who first tried to talk about 

 his hobby, labelled it with a hybrid name derived 

 by contraction from " phenomenon" and "ology." 

 His idea was to describe the determination of the 

 relations existing between climatic conditions 

 and periodic events in the seasonal activities of 

 plants and animals. In short, plain words he 

 tried to see how the seasons, frosts, and the like 

 tied in with the coming of the birds and flowers, 

 the ripening of fruits, and the falling of leaves. 

 Everybody can be a phenologist, therefore; and 

 many persons are even if they don't know it! 



Now comes Dr. A. D. Hopkins, forest ento- 

 mologist of the Department of Agriculture and 

 says that success in gardening depends on the 

 care in noting these changes in nature, and in 

 acting upon their suggestions. 



The Most Ancient of Ideas 



EVERY one knows that this is no new idea. 

 The very names of some of the commoner 

 plants indicate that they have long been recog- 

 nized as guides. In the Atlantic tidewater re- 

 gion the Shadbush blossoms told the Indians, 

 long before the whites came, when it was time to 

 fish for shad. On the Pacific Coast the Salmon- 

 berry blooms when the salmon are running. 

 When White Oak leaves are the size of squirrel 

 feet, says the folk-lore of some regions, it is safe 

 to plant corn (and when that is the case all other 

 tender crops can be planted too). When the 

 Blackberry is in full bloom, the home-gardener 

 in any region where they grow may know that 

 frost danger is safely past, and tender plants 

 may be set out. 



Plants are a better index than birds because 

 birds can be fooled; robins will come to a given 

 locality on almost the same date every year, even 

 though a late snow may starve many after they 

 arrive. Of course, frost may brown the Mag- 

 nolia blossoms, but this is exceptional and of little 

 consequence in a long period of years. 



Even though Dr. Hopkins has worked out a 

 rule, to say nothing of a series of maps and dia- 

 grams, he says that the index given by the native 

 plants is the best to use. The season in general, 

 according to his rule, varies four days for each one 

 degree of latitude, five degrees of longitude, and 

 four hundred feet of altitude. Thus, lines of equal 

 plant development for a given date would slant 

 in a northwesterly direction from their point of 

 origin on the Atlantic coast to their end on the 

 Pacific, with variations for the mountain chains 

 and the valleys over which they pass. I his is 

 in accordance with the common knowledge that 



points on the Pacific Coast have a warmer cli- 

 mate than those directly east of them on the 

 Atlantic Coast. Los Angeles, about nine degrees 

 north of Miami, Florida, has about the same sort 

 of sub-tropical vegetation; the time for seeding 

 winter wheat in the neighborhood of Omaha, 

 Nebraska, about halfway across the continent and 

 about \\ degrees farther north, is the same as 

 that for the neighborhood of Lynchburg, Virginia. 

 Wjth the diagrams issued by the Department 

 of Agriculture, all this can be worked out. It 

 has been worked out in respect to winter wheat 

 planting to thwart the Hessian fly. Its practical 

 application is demonstrated. Posters displayed 

 in the farming regions of New York, Pennsyl- 

 vania, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, 

 West Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, 

 Nebraska, Oklahoma, gave for each county the 

 dates after which winter wheat should be sown 

 to avoid the Hessian fly. These posters urged 

 the destruction of all volunteer wheat which 

 had come up before these dates, and asked the 

 cooperation of all neighbors in a community 

 to sow just after the fly-free dates, because one 

 early-sown field may infest all others the next 

 spring. The map-calendar poster emphasizes 

 the point that "in a normal season" the winter 

 wheat should not be planted before the earliest 

 date given, but that seed should be in the ground 

 before the last date. 



The Inflexible Calendar 



' 1 TTE calendar, like most hard-and-fast rules 

 -"- in black-and-white, cannot always be re- 

 lied upon without some other guide where opera- 

 tions are so dependent upon the hazards of 

 weather as in the business of growing plants. 



Nature's old reliable clock: When the leaf of the White Oak is 

 the size of a squirrel's foot it is safe to plant corn 



Doctor Hopkins, who devised the map-calendar, 

 is not the scientist of the stage, and of popular 

 tradition. Having been also a farmer, he knows 

 that a good farmer derives from his ordinary 

 farm practices a fund of useful information that 

 is quite as reliable as the carefully worked out 

 formulas of the research worker. Therefore, 

 says he, use the calendar as a general guide; 

 then if you have the tall, late Goldenrod in your 

 neighborhood and a common white Japanese 

 Clematis vine on the house porches, these will 

 furnjsh an index that will vary with normal and 

 abnormal seasons, and thus be more reliable than 

 anything that can be put upon paper. He has 

 found that winter wheat sown between the time 

 of full bloom of the tall, late Goldenrod and the 



20 



When the Blackberry is in full bloom it is safe for the gardener, 

 in any region, to set out tender piants 



time when the flowers are nearly all gone from the 

 Clematis, is not only the best time for the wheat 

 but it will be free from damage by the fall attack 

 of the Hessian fly. 



Nature-made Spray Calendars 



A NOTHER example of the same thing is 

 ■*■■*■ shown in the recent revisions of the spray- 

 ing calendars. The old-style spray calendar 

 that gave dates for a whole state is now obsolete, 

 such a calendar is manifestly unreliable, for 

 example, in a state like New York, more than 

 300 miles long from north to south and from 

 east to west, with climate locally modified to a 

 marked degree by the lakes Erie and Ontario, 

 and by the so-called Finger Lakes. The apple 

 spray calendar now issued by the State college of 

 agriculture is based not at all upon dates, but 

 upon the development of the bud, blossom, and 

 fruit of the apple itself. It is simpler, more re- 

 liable and more easily remembered — any one can 

 keep in mind the simple fact that "the calyx 

 spray gets the codling moth." 



There is a safest and best time for the recur- 

 ring farm and garden practices to prevent or 

 control the damage done by insect pests, and 

 possibly by plant diseases and to otherwise 

 secure the best crop. This time may vary from 

 year to year according to the season; and the best 

 index as to the variation is the behavior of local 

 plants and animals. 



A New Nature Study 



/^LOSE observation by each gardener or by 

 ^^ local groups (such as garden clubs), will 

 give recorded and interpreted periodical dates 

 that can be based each year on the performance 

 of nature all about. 



Here is a new incentive and impetus to nature- 

 study that will have a very practical reaction. 

 If the blossoming of Joe-pye weed and the flaming 

 of the Sumac leaves are the signal for important 

 garden operations, they will be noted with a 

 keener interest than is given by the mere delight 

 in their beauty. Possibly, too, an interest in 

 their useful significance may lead to a new appre- 

 ciation of their aesthetic quality. 



Let each gardener note the flowering or other 

 striking event in the life of the nearby wild or 

 cultivated plants in connection with the planting 

 of certain crops, and then note results with that 

 crop, as to development, maturity, and yield 

 when harvested. When definite maximum re- 

 sults are obtained with any crop, and a relation 

 established between these results and a striking 

 phase of local plant life, this established index 

 will give the exact time for any planting opera' 

 tion in any locality. 



