176 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



April, 1911 



igtnne/S- 



Cucumbers for Six on Ten 

 Square Feet 



IT MAY seem hard to believe, but nevertheless 

 it is true, that one may grow cucumbers enough 

 for a family of six on a space of ten square feet. 

 When we saw the remarkable product last year 

 in a neighbor's garden late in July, he said his 

 family had already consumed a great many, in 

 addition to having pickled a large quantity. There 

 were then on the vines at least a half bushel of 

 cucumbers, all sizes, and the vines were still bloom- 

 ing and fruiting. The leaves, too, were of good 

 color, indicating plenty of vigor. 



This gardener had planted his cucumbers ten 

 inches apart, in a row ten feet long, in soil that 

 had been very highly manured with poultry 

 manure, mixed with wood ashes and lime. The 

 ground had been thoroughly broken with a spade 

 and the soil stirred two or three times with a dig- 

 ging fork in the spring before the planting. When 

 the plants came up he built a trellis ten feet square, 

 leaning at about 45 degrees angle with the ground 

 and toward the north. The low side was eight 

 inches from the ground and almost directly over 

 the row of plants. 



As the latter grew he trained them to run on the 

 trellis, which was built of laths on a frame of one 

 by four boards. The laths were two inches apart. 

 In very dry weather he occasionally poured water 

 on the ground under the trellis, and, of course, being 

 shaded, the ground kept cool and moist, while 

 the vines had all the sunshine possible. 



South Carolina. R. S. Shannonhouse. 



Planting Fruit Trees With 

 Dynamite 



WHEN you buy your fruit trees for growing 

 in the garden, get a good strong trunk, two 

 or three years old, cut it back to twelve inches from 

 the ground surface before planting, trim back 

 all roots to clean growth and set as follows: 



Get the family crowbar — if the family hasn't 

 one, take your largest poker and a spade, or even 

 the fire shovel — into the garden. Pick out your 

 location so that water will run away from it, 

 shovel off a circle of top earth and lay to one side. 

 With crowbar or poker, bore a hole into the ground 

 at least eighteen inches deep and one and a half 

 inches across. An old one-and-a-half-inch carpen- 

 ter's auger will do the trick nicely. Cover the 

 hole up to keep dry. 



Hurry down to your hardware man, and ask 

 him to give you a half stick of dynamite with cap, 

 and two feet of best fuse firmly attached. If 

 you understand working with powder you can do 

 it yourself. Get your dynamite home and lay it 

 in the sun to warm up until it pinches soft like 

 butter that spreads nicely. If you have no sun, 

 take the lid from the kitchen stove, cool enough 

 to bear your hand on, wrap your dynamite in 

 newspaper and let it lie outdoors on the warm 

 stove lid until it is sufficiently warm and soft. 



Shut the family pup and the children in the 

 house, and carry your warm dynamite and attached 

 fuse and cap to your bored hole; drop it in gently, 

 urge it downward to the botton of the hole and tuck 

 in a little fine, loose dirt. Now pour in a bucket of 

 water, just blood warm. Light a bit of candle and 

 hold to the end of fuse above ground until the 



powder in fuse begins to spit at you like a big 

 firecracker. Now run, say twenty-five feet. 



When you go back to that inch and half hole 

 after the explosion you will find your ground 

 nicely pulverized for several feet. Also you can 

 dig out the subsoil with your shovel and throw 

 it away. Put your scraped-off topsoil into hole 

 to fill to proper depth, depending on length of 

 root stock from graft to end of longest root. 



The tree should be set with graft two inches be- 

 low the surrounding surface. I set a tree with 

 my bare hands, tucking each rootlet into nice 

 fine earth, until all is covered, and then I tramp it 

 viciously. Put on a little more loose earth, add 

 a bucket of water, and let it settle. Lastly fill 

 in with soft fine crumbly soil. If the top earth 

 packs, work in lawn cuttings, bedding from the 

 horse or even old leaves. But never let that top 

 ground get hard or caked. 



I can assure you from experience that that tree 

 will make you the envy of all your friends and you 

 will need a hat several sizes larger! 



The dynamite kills out all animal eggs and 

 pests, digs up your subsoil so that your ground 

 never dries out, and chemists claim it fills the soil 

 with nitrogen and other desirable fertilizer. 



An apple orchard of four acres, set in this 

 manner two years ago, has not lost a single tree, 

 and is often mistaken for a five-year-old plantation. 



Oregon. Estelle M. Rawley. 



Planting For Succession 



IN PLANNING the rotation of crops for the 

 kitchen garden, the idea is never to let a foot 

 of the ground remain idle. For instance: 



Sow peas in rows four feet apart. Between 

 these sow two rows of spinach one foot apart, 

 and radishes one foot apart. Both of these vege- 

 tables are ready for use before the peas. Early 

 varieties of the latter, such as D. O'Rourke and 

 Nott's Excelsior, are ready for use early in June. 



They are succeeded by early celery, corn or 

 string beans; or, for instance, where early cabbage 

 was grown, fall turnips, rutabaga, etc., can be sown. 

 In July, sow onions in rows fifteen inches apart 

 and a space of two feet should be left at every 

 fifth row to accommodate three rows of celery 

 eight inches apart. 



As soon as the earthing-up process begins for 

 the celery, the two inside rows of onions can be 

 utilized for the table. Lettuce can always follow 

 any crop. Late cabbage can follow early b.eets 

 and carrots, so that as one crop is taken off another 

 is immediately put in. 



New York. George Standen. 



Root Pruning Before Starting 



NEVER plant a tree or shrub without properly 

 trimming up the roots. It stands to reason 

 that they have been damaged in the moving and 

 there is some danger of the broken surfaces rotting 

 and giving trouble later. Take a sharp knife and 

 make smooth all ends of the larger roots by an up- 

 ward and outward cut. The illustration shows 



exactly how this is done, although the operator 

 would find he worked far more easily if he used a 

 proper pruning knife with a curved blade. This 

 will ensure perfect contact with the soil and give 

 no lodging place for water. Also new roots will 

 spread out in a normal manner from this kind 

 of cut. 



Transplanting from the Wild 



AMONG the many wild shrubs which may be 

 easily grown in cultivation, and which cost 

 nothing but a trip to the woods or meadow, the 

 various dogwoods, viburnums, elderberry and the 

 barberry are prominent. The dogwoods and the 

 elderberry are very rapid growers; the viburnums 

 and the barberry are strikingly handsome, but do 

 not increase so quickly. 



In the latitude of Boston the best time for lift- 

 ing and resetting such plants is in late April and 

 early May, before the foliage has made much 

 growth. 



Plant firmly on a damp morning or evening, 

 after cutting back the tops until they have a spread 



These native white pines, transplanted from the 

 woods years ago. have made rapid growth 



not much larger than the roots. Water plenti- 

 fully until the shrub becomes well fixed, then 

 give judicious cultivation and fertilization. 



Below I give a list of plants I know to be 

 satisfactory, rapid growers being marked with 

 a star: 



Viburnums 



Cranberry tree 

 Arrow wood 



Barberry 



Hawthorn 



Sweetbrier 



Evergreens 

 Balsam fir 

 American yew 

 i Savin 



Various ferns 



Clematis* 



Chokeberry 



Massachusetts. 



Elderberry* 



Great flowering* 

 Alternate leaved* 



Privet* 



Sweet pepperbush 



Meadow rue* 



White pine* 



Black or red spruce 



Hemlock* 



Larch* 



Waxwork 



Blueberry 



Helen W. Ross. 



A Bit of Blue and White 



IN ONE corner of my garden, blue and white 

 reigns supreme from April to October with 

 no great effort, and I wonder if any one else has 

 ever tried my simple combination. Before the 

 snow has gone in early spring, snowdrops and 

 blue scillas are a mass of bloom. I have cut 

 bunches of snow drops (the giant Galanthus Elwesi) 

 when only the white bell was to be seen above 

 the snow and the stems were to be cut only by 

 plunging one's hand deep in the snow. These 

 are succeeded by blue hyacinths and Narcissus 

 odorata and early single white tulips; before these 

 have all gone the hardy double blue violets and the 

 late white tulips come on. Then the delphiniums 

 — can enough be said in praise of the hardy kind? 

 Against an 8-foot trellis, mine often overtop it 

 by more than a foot. In front of these are white 

 Japanese iris. 



The larkspur keeps on all summer, after the iris 

 is gone. In back of the iris is a row of white 

 annual larkspur that continues to bloom till frost 

 comes. 



Pennsylvania. Mrs. N. B. Graves. 





