316 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



June, 191 



(Editor's Note. — We want to know how suc- 

 cessful workers do things in order to put actual 

 experiences before our thousands of readers in all 

 parts of the country. Every reader is invited to con- 

 tribute a short note on some interesting experience. 

 Just state the facts about some ingenious idea that you 

 have actually worked out yourself or have seen.) 



House plants outdoors 



For the last two summers I have kept my 

 pots of house plants in a place which has 

 proved ideal — a shelf supported on strong 

 brackets running the full length of the outer 

 wall of the kitchen. It is so high from the 

 ground that the foliage and flowers are on a 

 level with my eye, and a quick glance along 

 the line as I pass by enables me to detect 

 promptly any disease or insect trouble. A 

 cleat along the front edge prevents the pots 

 from being knocked off, and the slope of the 

 shelf is enough to make the water drain to 

 the further end, where a small hole sends 

 it through a near-by drain. This shelf is 

 on the east side of the house, and the plants 

 receive only a little of the morning sun on 

 account of a grape vine which is trained on 

 a trellis across the cement walk to the roof 

 of the kitchen. Most of the plants enjoy 

 this shade; those which require more sun 

 are placed on the end of the shelf which is 

 beyond the shadow of the vine. It cer- 

 tainly is convenient to have all the plants 

 kept together in a position where they can 

 be tended without stooping and where 

 they do not dry out fast on account of the 

 shade. — A. H. M., Pennsylvania. 



Flowers for shaded porch boxes 



On the readers' service page of the 

 February Garden Magazine, E. W. S. 

 asks about flowers for shaded porch boxes. 

 My boxes do not get over an hour's sun- 

 light a day. I use only single tuberous 

 begonias, starting them in the house 

 in February or March in flats, in a rather 

 cool room. I have used these for years, 

 and do not see any other porch boxes that 

 I consider prettier than mine. I find that 

 the cheaper priced begonias give me prac- 

 tically as good results as the higher priced 

 ones.— T. A. B. J., Michigan. 



Beating the squash borer 



One day last summer I found the leaves 

 of the squash vines in my garden wilted 

 and some of them turning yellow and 

 dying. During a few days' absence the 

 squash borer had gotten in his fine work. 

 I knew that if let alone the vines were 

 doomed, so resolved on heroic measures. 

 From the puncture each borer had made in 



the stem I split the bark over their tunnels 

 and removed every one I could find, then 

 covered the cut stems as well as I could 

 with soil. The vines brightened up at 

 once and matured a fair crop of squashes. 

 — F. B. H., Ohio. 



A morning glory decoration 



If one wishes to have a genuine surprise 

 for the family some morning at breakfast, 

 make a centre piece for the table of morning 

 glories. Select large, pointed and spirally 

 twisted buds the evening before they are 

 needed. Arrange them loosely in a vase 

 or bowl, allowing some of the branches of 

 the vine, with a few good buds, to trail 

 over the table around the bowl. Give an 

 abundance of room for the flowers to expand 

 which they will do in the night. Put 

 in a few upright twigs of shrubbery to 

 which the vine is attached. The effect 

 is very pretty. — A. F. C., Colorado. 



Picking lima beans 



It is a good idea, when picking lima 

 beans, to have two baskets. All dried or 

 yellow pods should be pulled off and put 

 into one basket, while those intended for 

 immediate use are, of course, thrown into 

 the other. The mature beans should be 

 shelled, exposed to the sun for a day or two, 

 and then put away in tin boxes (empty 

 cracker tins are convenient) for use during 

 the winter or for seed if so desired. Soak 

 the dried beans several hours before cook- 

 ing. The addition of a small piece of salt 

 pork or bacon lends a pleasant flavor to 

 the beans.— E. A. S. P., New York. 



A secret about asters 



I find that aster plants grown in the open 

 ground from seed sown the first of May give 

 better satisfaction than those grown in 

 flats or the greenhouse and that they are 

 less liable to disease; in fact my loss from 

 stem rot has been less than one per cent, 

 since using plants grown in the open. My 

 troubles from plants being killed by root 

 lice I find has been overcome by dressing 

 the bed before setting out the plants with 

 wood ashes, working them in to a depth of 

 about three inches. Being the owner of 

 only a small city lot, I was much discour- 

 aged when others who had raised asters 

 told me that they could not be successfully 

 raised twice on the same ground; but rather 

 than give them up, I decided to rotate my 

 crops. Where I had a bed of asters three 

 years ago, the next year I had a bed of 

 cannas and the next year a bed of dahlias, 

 both root crops, and last year I had as fine 

 a bed of asters as any one could want in the 

 same place as the original bed. Next year 

 I shall rotate with gladiolus and the follow- 

 ing year with some other bulbous plant, 

 thus demonstrating that though a person 

 may have only a small garden, at the same 

 time they may have a bed of asters each 

 year. — C. G. M., Indiana. 



Laths for shade 



In Australia they grow strawberries 

 under laths. Not only does this protect 

 them from the intense heat of summer but 



it is claimed that the flavor is improved 

 thereby; a fairly reasonable hypothesis in 

 view of the fact that wild strawberries, 

 which are somewhat shaded by the herb- 

 age as well as their own foliage, are more 

 delicious than any cultivated ones. Orange 

 cuttings and all kinds of seedlings also are 

 grown in Australia under laths, which are 

 placed the width of one of the strips apart. 

 Here the idea might be worth while to 

 prolong the strawberry season slightly. It 

 already is known here as a good way of par- 

 tially shading cuttings and, on a larger scale, 

 of protecting palms and other tropical 

 plants in summer. — H. N. T., Connecticut. 



The Pennsylvania anemone 



Last May a nurseryman told me that he 

 was relegating to the compost heap his 

 entire stock of the Pennsylvanian anemone 

 (A. Pennsylvanica). Why? For the sim- 

 ple reason that no one thereabouts would 

 buy it; he could not even give it away. I 

 confess that I felt sorry to see converted 

 into an outcast a flower that, more than a 

 thousand miles from home, I had grown 

 fond of in the wild and had just introduced 

 in my garden at an expenditure of fifteen 

 cents. Now that I have known the plant 

 intimately for a year, I am sorrier than 

 before. Thanks to separation at the time 

 of planting, my little clump has become 

 a big clump with a perfect wealth of white 

 bloom above the beautiful foliage. The 

 effect is cool and refreshing on a warm June 

 day and always, I think, I shall like to have 

 some of it in the hardy border — or at any 

 rate until I have a place of sufficient size to 

 see at large the ideas as to naturalization 

 that I have been accumulating. For that 

 is the best way to use the Pennsylvanian 

 anemone, whose name is as insufficient 

 geographically as A quilegia Canadensis. In 

 the border it spreads with astonishing 

 rapidity. — H. S. A., New York. 



The Pennsylvania anemone naturalizes easily and 

 shows its white flowers in June 



