36 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



February, 1919 



There's only one motto 

 You need 

 To succeed — 

 "BETTER" 



The other man's winning? 

 Then you 

 Must do 

 BETTER! 



IN no other way than by repeating this 

 little poem by Cooke, could I illustrate 

 so well what it is that has yearly made 

 PETERSON ROSES better and still bet- 

 ter, until now they are freely acknowledged 

 by rosarians the world over the best that 

 are anywhere produced. 



AN inborn and ever-increasing love for 

 jTa. ^e rose, combined with enthusiasm 

 and hard work, has produced a result 

 which annually brings forth, entirely unso- 

 licited, literally hundreds of such letters 

 as follow: 



Gowanda, N. Y., April 24, 1918 

 "Of all the rose growers from whom I have 

 procured goods, am glad to advise that yours 

 show the healthiest and sturdiest growth, and 

 furnish the greatest number of blooms." 



W. J. Miller 



123 Wyoming Ave., Scranlon, Pa., . 



June 14, 1918 

 "It may interest you to \now that I or- 

 dered roses from five different concerns, and 

 that your plants were far superior to any 

 I received." 



Harry Simpson 



"A LITTLE BOOK ABOUT ROSES" 



sent on request, tells you the whole story 



George H. Peterson 



Rose and Peony Specialist 



Box 50, Fair Lawn, N. J. 



AS OTHERS SEE IT 



Increased Fruit Yield. — If the spirit of rev- 

 ered old "Johnny Appleseed" still wanders over 

 the plains country of the Middle West, it must cer- 

 tainly be with a sense of pleasure and satisfac- 

 tion. For the final estimates of the U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture place the 1918 commer- 

 cial apple crop at 25,404,500 barrels, or 396,500 

 more than were looked for in November, and 

 nearly 3,000,000 more than the crop of 

 1917. 



Acid Phosphate for Corn. — An increase of 

 10 bushels to the acre was secured by the appli- 

 cation of acid phosphate on corn land the past 

 season on some demonstration plots on farm 

 of L. E. Marrs, Shelby County, Ohio. In cooper- 

 ation with the county farm bureau, Mr. Marrs 

 planted eight rows of corn of 450 hills each to 

 which no fertilizer was applied. To similar 

 plots acid phosphate was applied at the rate of 

 250 pounds per acre, and at the rate of 500 pounds 

 per acre, respectively. The unfertilized plot 

 produced 67 bushels and 38 pounds per acre.- 

 The plot to which applications at the rate of 

 250 and 50c pounds per acre were applied each 

 yielded 76 bushels and 12 pounds per acre. The 

 corn from the fertilized, was better matured than 

 that on the unfertilized plots. 



Purple and Mauve in the Border. — Part of 

 the joy of gardening is the planning of color 

 schemes, the designing of border combinations, 

 the harmonizing of varietal shades under varying 

 conditions. But as the true gardener is glad to 

 have his discoveries and inventions appreciated 

 and utilized by others, so he is ready to see the 

 good points of other folks' achievements and to 

 make use of them. Such an accomplishment 

 that is well worth copying, according to The 

 Garden is a combination of Verbena venosa and 

 dwarf Ageratum in a long narrow border in the 

 gardens of Lady Binning at Tyninghame. The 

 purple verbena fills the centre of the bed, being 

 planted close enough to make a solid, rich mass. 

 This is surrounded by a wide edging of the con- 

 trasting ageratum, and the general effect is re- 

 ported as being strikingly rich, unusual and 

 withal quiet and dignified — qualities which all 

 too often are conspicuous by their absence in 

 annual "bedding plots." 



Ant Control. — A correspondent suggests the 

 following as a method of getting rid of ants: 

 "Fill small saucers about one half inch to the 

 edge with molasses and place these in the trails 

 of the ant. Put a man on the job to watch them 

 and as soon as the ants crowd around the edges 

 of the saucers simply push them into the mo- 

 lasses. Keep this up for a day and not many will 

 be left." 



Not many of that generation, perhaps, but 

 how about the others that are hatching out down 

 in the nest as fast as the queen or mother ant 

 who never leaves the sacred precincts of the 

 home, can lay eggs? This sounds strangely 

 like the classic plan for putting an ambulance at 

 the foot of a cliff to pick up the people that 

 fall over the edge, instead of placing a strong 

 fence along the brink. The drowning method 

 may work, but by all the teachings of nature 

 study, it would be more effective to single out 

 an ant, mark him for identification purposes if 

 necessary, and track him to his lair, thereupon 

 destroying with boiling water or carbon bi- 

 sulphide the fountain head of the invasion. 

 Nor would this method of "keeping a man on 

 the job" be any less appropriate or expensive 

 in these days of labor shortage, than the practice 



of stationing an able bodied worker to push the 

 accumulating insects into saucers of molasses. 



Resistant Chestnuts.— Mr. H. F. Kellerman, 

 Acting Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, 

 reports that during the past year several American 

 Chestnut trees have been located which are 

 apparently highly resistant to the chestnut blight 

 which has made practically a clean sweep of the 

 original chestnut stands in New England, New 

 York and Pennsylvania. This discovery, he 

 says, gives a promise of obtaining, by selection 

 and propagation, a strain of American Chestnuts 

 which can be used for reforestation. Hitherto 

 resistance has been found only in oriental species, 

 which, while suitable for nut production, are too 

 small for timber uses. 



The Chrysanthemum Gall-fly.— The Flor- 

 ists' Exchange reports that Chrysanthemums 

 all over the United States have been more or 

 less seriously affected by the "Chrysanthemum 

 midge or gall-fly during the past season," prob- 

 ably owing to the fact that many growers did 

 not notice the insect until it had become very 

 numerous. As a control measure it recommends 

 fumigating every three days for a period of 30 

 days with hydrocyanic acid gas; or every two 

 days for a similar period with nicotine paper. 

 In either case, it emphasizes the necessity of 

 fumigating after midnight, since the insect has a 

 habit of emerging from the gall-like swellings it 

 produces on the plants, between midnight and 

 morning. 



Salsify Stalks, an Asparagus Substitute. — 

 One of the commonest difficulties in growing 

 salsify, which some people refuse to know as 

 other than "oyster plant," is the tendency of the 

 roots to fork and make unsatisfactory growth 

 both lengthwise and diametrically. Of course 

 the cause of this tendency is a shallow, ill- 

 prepared soil and an incomplete mixing in of the 

 manure used. But a knowledge of why the 

 trouble occurred is of but little help when a crop 

 is found to be developing in that direction. A 

 suggestion that is of value, however, is made by 

 a contributor to The Garden (England), who 

 advises that such a crop be left in the ground over 

 winter. Being a biennial, it will, the succeeding 

 spring, send up flower stalks or "chards" as he 

 calls them which, he says, if not permitted to 

 exceed six inches in height, "make a nice dish 

 served like Asparagus." 



Spills from Phlox Stems. — The word "spills" 

 always brings to my mind such early works of 

 J. M. Barrie as " My Lady Nicotine" and "When 

 a Man's Single." I thought that those home 

 made pipe lighters were a thing of the mid- 

 Victorian past — although the war matches of 

 to-day are certainly cause enough to wish .the 

 twisted paper tapers back into our daily life. 

 Probably that is what has actually happened in 

 England, for I note in a recent issue of The Garden 

 a paragraph of praise for the common herbaceous 

 Phlox as a source of durable, long-burning, 

 cleanly, and eminently satisfactory spills. The 

 writer says, "With matches quite rare and often 

 unobtainable, wood impossible, and paper and 

 cardboard most objectionable for lighting candle 

 or lamp, by reason of the abundant residue of 

 their timber, the Phlox spills have stood one in 

 excellent stead. Of ideal thickness and re- 

 quiring no other preparation than breaking into 

 9-inch lengths and drying in an oven for a night 

 or two, it is surprising how well they answer and 

 how long they endure." 



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