The Garden Magazine, August, 1922 



381 



larly ending names) as being more euphonius and pleasing to 

 the eye and simpler in practice than the strict Latin plural 

 form ending in "i" — Gladioli, Croci, etc. 



the open; c olum: K^ 



Readers' Interchange of Experience and Comment 



"Fair Maid of February"? 



To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 



THE little fragrant Iris, known to Mrs. Henderson as "Fair Maid 

 of February" and inquired for by her (Open Column, July) is per- 

 haps I. persica. This is one of the earliest to bloom and belongs to 

 the Juno group of bulbous Irises. It still survives, I know, in the 

 old-fashioned gardens of one part of the South, evidently finding soil 

 and climate to its liking and sending out its fragrance before the 

 Violets hardly dare. 



Foster ("Bulbous Irises") tells us that this is the most widely known 

 variety of the group and was familiar to Parkinson and Gerard and 

 even to Clusius. A few bulbs were placed in my north New Jersey 

 garden two years ago and April 3d of this year I was rewarded by a 

 bloom, followed soon by another from the same bulb. The blossom 

 of palest sea-green, black violet, and gold is one of beauty and dis- 

 tinction and I am hoping it will be as happy here as it has been in the 

 southern home. The blossom is open almost before the leaves have 

 speared the soil. Finding this little immigrant (it comes from 

 southern Persia) in these old gardens has been one of the many happy 

 incidents of the pursuit of the genus Iris as a hobby. — Ella Porter 

 McKinney, Madison, N. J. 



Two Irises that Thrive in California 



To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 



IRIS stylosa (unguicularis) behaves so beautifully here in central 

 California, growing easily, blooming well, and making such a good ap- 

 pearance at all times that it seems a pity it is not more generally known. 

 I have three clumps established only a year and a few smaller ones 

 set out last September, all of them in a rather cold situation, and since 

 the first of November I have never failed to find one or more blossoms 

 out. Many times there are nine or ten in bloom, even in the face of 

 light frosts and with the longer days more and more blossoms are com- 

 ing. Of course the stems are short, but average at least seven inches 

 and the blossoms are so dainty and so sweet that they are lovely for 

 the house. 



Another Iris which does well with me is japonica, blooming in March. 

 The blossoms are small but exquisite, on good stems, with several on a 

 stalk. The evergreen foliage is a light, glossy green and forms a charm- 

 ing contrast to the light blue blossoms. It is the one Iris which I have 

 found does well in heavy shade and it increases very rapidly. — Leila 

 B. Stapleton, Oroville, Cat. 



More of the Rabbit and His Idiosyncrasies 



To the Editors o/The Garden Magazine: 



What W. C. Egan had to say about "The Idiosyncrasies of the 

 Rabbit" in the February magazine interested me greatly. Mr. 

 Egan is a mind reader when he accuses the rabbit of "cussedness," for 

 that's the animal's real name. I know, because I've long been an en- 

 raged sufferer from the "cussedness" of the animal! 



Before I discovered their wicked plot, rabbits cut down to a six-inch 

 stub a four-foot Eva Rathke Weigela that had all the previous summer 

 been a miracle of bloom; they lop-sided my Japan Snowballs and Pyrus 

 japonica, exterminated the Kerria and fourteen Rose bushes, and cut 

 down the dwarf Apple trees. I had five Azaleas that in the fall were 

 so full of buds I had great expectations of a fine springtime blossom- 

 ing, but before spring came, the iniquitous, ubiquitous rabbit had 

 nearly decapitated the entire top of the bushes, which have never re- 

 gained their lost size and vigor, though that was three years ago. Now 

 they make but a half-hearted attempt at blooming. 



These rabbits mowed off my groups of Crocus and beds of Darwin 

 Tulips as soon as the green spears thrust through the ground. I scat- 

 tered Lettuce and Cabbage leaves in the garden hoping to lure them 

 from the shrubs, but found they prefer a hard, thorny Rose stalk any- 



time to a tender Cabbage leaf. They harvested my crop of choice Pyre- 

 thrum buds, and finished the repast with a salad of hardy Chrysanthe- 

 mum tops. 



The peculiar point about it is that they confine their depredations 

 to my premises. They never inadvertently stroll over to any of the 

 neighbors' yards and make a hearty meal off any of their scenery. Not 

 in ten years time have they been known to covet anything that is my 

 neighbors'! 



So now I surround my rose beds and remaining shrubs with wire 

 netting, fastened to stakes driven into the ground. It is something 

 of a job to do this every autumn and the result is not in any degree orna- 

 mental to the landscape, giving the grounds the appearance of a poul- 

 try farm, but it puts a quietus on the hilarity of the pesky rabbit. I 

 watched a dazed-looking rabbit hunched up against the protecting 

 wires gazing covetously within at the Rose bushes "so near and yet so 

 far," and he seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears as he 

 realized his occupation was gone in that vicinity. — Mrs. Wilson G. 

 Smith, Lakewood, Ohio. 



If You Are Growing '"Mums" or Huckleberries 



To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 



THOSE who are interested in William Currie's letter in the March 

 number as to growing exhibition Chrysanthemums outdoors, will 

 also be interested in the protection for Chrysanthemums told of by 

 L. H. Bailey on pages 337 and 366 of his "Manual of Gardening." Fol- 

 lowing his plan, the Chrysanthemums would be planted on the south ' 

 side of the house, with a roof of glass or oil paper about eight feet from 

 the ground; the roof inclined at an angle of 45 degrees, the upper end 

 resting on the house and the lower end on poles. 



Mr. McFarland's hope, expressed in the same issue, for a tannic acid 

 soil prescription and answered by you with a prescription of water in 

 which spruce bark chips have been soaked, suggests to me that Oak 

 leaves should be used in preference to other leaves in and on the soil 

 where Box Huckleberry. is planted, for their known tendency to acidity. 

 This also leads me to ask whether the acid fertilizer with an acid re- 

 action which is advocated by the Agricultural Experiment Station of 

 Rhode Island State College, for use with Bent Grasses and Fescues, as 

 a weed exterminator, would not be available for Box Huckleberries. 

 The formula for that fertilizer is: 



250 lbs. sulphate ammonia 

 400 lbs. acid phosphate 

 250 lbs. muriate of potash 



The quantity is for an acre. Assuming a Huckleberry patch to be 100th 

 of an acre, the quantity would, of course, be t.\ lbs. sulphate of ammonia; 

 4 lbs. acid phosphate; 2\ lbs. muriate of potash. 



I am using the Rhode Island formula with the Bent Grasses and Fes- 

 cues obtainable (real Rhode Island Bent seems to be impossible to get), 

 and am watching "in vengeful silence" for what I hope it will do to all 

 the Crab Grass this summer. — Arthur McCausland, N. Y. 

 — We assure you the Neighbors would like to know the results! — Ed. 



Setting Up Your Own Sun-Dial 



To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 



RECENTLY 1 have had the pleasure of re-reading several numbers 

 of The Garden Magazine, and feel moved to tell you of the in- 

 spiration and help received. The Open Column especially is helpful, 

 and I would like to see more records of the experiences of amateur gar- 

 deners. (So would we! — Ed.) 



The pictures of sun-dials suggested to me that the story of how 

 I set up one in my own garden might interest other readers. I pur- 

 chased the dial itself from a firm whose advertisement I saw in 

 The Garden Magazine, and the next thing was to mount it in some 

 sort of simple way in keeping with my unpretentious, comparatively 

 small garden. From one friend I got the cheese box idea; from another 

 the suggestion for terra-cotta pipe; chicken wire and Ivy were my own 

 contributions to the plan. A round hole several feet in diameter was 

 made and nearly, but not quite, filled with cement. The terra-cotta 

 pipe was set in the centre leaving about four feet above the surface 

 of the ground, which necessitated using two lengths. The circular 

 plinth upon which the dial was to be mounted was made by filling the 

 cheese box with cement. When the cement hardened the box was sawed 

 away leaving a plinth four inches deep and three or four inches wider 

 than the dial all around. In short, it was just right! After the dial was set 

 and the hole filled, grass seed was sown up to the base of the pedestal. 

 I then put chicken wire around the pipe; planted real English Ivy, the 



