July. 1 91 ^ 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



367 



Conducted by Ellen Eddy Shaw 



A Boy's Garden Experience 



1 BEGAN work for my garden by sowing 

 tomato seed in window boxes the 

 eighteenth of April, transplanting them 

 twice in the house. The third time I set 

 them out-of-doors in a coldframe. I had 

 nine dozen at the time of setting out, so 

 I thinned out all the weakly ones each 

 time I transplanted. Later on I sold 

 seven dozen at fifteen cents a dozen. Al- 

 though my plants were smaller than usual 

 they were very thick and stocky. I moved 

 one dozen to my home vegetable garden 

 and the other dozen I left in the coldframe 

 My regular home garden is 40 feet wide and 

 65 feet long. I have another strip 15x81 ft., 

 which I have not had good success with so 

 far. The land is poor and partly shaded. 

 The first year — 1909 — the earth was full 

 of cutworms. In setting out one tomato 

 plant I dug up 300 and then gave up the 

 count, but not for lack of worms. My 

 early peas were all that amounted to 

 anything. Last year I laid that garden 

 down to oats. This year my father 

 helped me plow it and I planted the upper 

 end as follows, rows running the width of 

 my garden: Peas, 6 rows; beets, 4 rows; 

 lettuce, 4 rows; radishes, 2 rows. 



Everything was very late in coming up. 

 But the peas blossomed as early as any in 

 town and the beets came up evenly. The 

 lettuce I had to water. When the dry 

 weather came on everything burned brown. 

 I was sorry to lose the early peas and beet 

 greens. But I plowed again and laid down 

 to Hungarian grass. It came up thicker 

 and taller in the upper end of garden 

 where I had put phosphate for the vege- 

 tables, I mowed it by hand and got it in. 

 I think of seeding that garden down and 

 not planting it again. 



My father helped me plow my home 

 garden and furrow it out. He also set 

 most of the bean poles as mine were on 

 too much of a slant. He put in one row 

 of peas, and later, part of the beans. 



I put in 50 hills of pole beans, 4 rows of 

 peas, 1^ rows lima beans, 40 hills of blue 



sweet corn, 13 hills Squantum sweet corn. 

 Set out one dozen tomato plants and in a 

 vacant space I planted parsnip seed but 

 that is the last I saw of it. I had a good 

 crop of weeds in that spot while waiting 

 for the parsnips to come up. 



Seeds from a hard shell winter Hubbard 

 squash by mistake came up too thickly, 

 and as my peas had gone by my mother 

 suggested setting those young squash 

 plants along the row. We transplanted 

 all but three of them when they had but 

 two leaves. Those transplanted soon 

 caught up with the others and went way 

 ahead of them. The squash bugs did not 

 appear until quite late, but they made 

 things lively for me when they did come. 

 I found the surest way was hand picking 

 and cutting out pieces from the leaves 

 which showed signs of eggs. 



The garden is just at the rear of the house, 

 and when the hot July weather came I 

 tapped the water pipe which entered the 

 kitchen up one story and ran three sections 

 of iron pipe out to my garden on a wooden 

 support. Every few days I would hitch 

 on the garden hose and sprinkle for about 

 an hour very often my father would water 

 while I would work around the house. I 

 helped with the plowing and planting of my 

 father's mill garden. I had twenty bushels 

 of corn. The Southern corn went up 12 

 feet but the ears did not get ripe. I 

 weeded and hoed some after school but 

 most of it was done by my father and the 

 mill help at dull times. When the hot 

 wave struck us, they gave up the garden 

 and I went in to see what I could do at 

 irrigation. While the mill was running I 

 could have all the water I wanted pro- 

 viding I could get it to the garden, so with 

 my father's help I ran a couple of lengths 

 of 3-inch iron pipe from the fire pump under 

 the mill to the back and so out to the garden, 

 then two lengths of 2-inch pipe which 

 reached to the upper end of garden. To 

 this end I fastened a T which gave me two 

 outlets for an inch and a quarter pipe. 

 One led to middle of garden, the other to 

 middle of upper end. I would start the 

 water and as fast as one furrow filled, I 

 would bank the end and turn it in the next, 

 and so down the length of the garden. 

 Another year I hope to rig up something a 

 little better. Provoost Thompson. 



West Groton, Mass. 



The Garden in July 



IN EARLY July make plantings of beans, 

 carrots, lettuce, and radish. Keep in 

 mind that Black Seeded Simpson is a very 

 good kind of lettuce for mid-summer 

 sowings. 



If the garden plants become infested 

 with black aphis, spray the plants with 

 some one of the special remedies offered 

 in the stores — they all have tobacco 

 juice as the base. 



Transplant into the wild flower garden 

 butter-and-eggs, tall bellflower, loosestrife, 

 and black-eyed Susan. 



Keep constantly stirring the soil. The 



loose coating of dust thus formed prevents 

 the escape of moisture from the soil. 



Begin to make up your records for The 

 Garden Magazine contest. We would 

 like to know just how much your garden 

 cost. Keep a careful record of each 

 item. If your garden cost forty cents, 

 what have you received from the garden 

 for that forty cents? Estimate the worth 

 of the garden. Get the regular market 

 prices and it is easy then to do the sum. 

 Write us a little story on what one can get 

 out of the soil for a certain sum. Take 

 some really good pictures of your garden. 

 The pictures should show some definite 

 thing. A picture should tell a story — we 

 don't want pictures of yourself and your 

 relatives, bilt pictures of the things you 

 have grown. 



Make cuttings of heliotrope and ver- 

 bena. Always break off all leaves except 

 the two or three terminal ones. Save 

 work for the young plants in this way. 



An experiment worth trying is to see if 

 you can successfully transplant evergreens, 

 Evergreens are very hard to take from their 

 surroundings and put into new ones. Take 

 a piece of sacking into the woods with you. 

 Select the little tree you wish to move and 

 thoroughly moisten the soil about the tree 

 before commencing to dig. Dig it up with 

 great care, keeping a good ball of earth 

 around the roots. Tie the roots and ball 

 of earth in the piece of burlap. Get home 

 as fast as possible and set the tree in its 

 new quarters. If you measure the hole 

 from which the tree came you will then 

 know the exact size of the new quarters. 

 For tree roots must not be cramped. 

 Water the hole in which the tree is to go. 

 Put the tree in the hole carefully, without 

 disturbing the roots or the "ball." Put 

 some very rich soil all about and over the 

 roots. Pack this in with your hands to 

 be sure you have made good contact be- 

 tween soil and roots. Fill in the hole with 

 soil and water freely. Do not let the 

 little tree get dried out during its first 

 days in strange quarters. 



Begin now to make cuttings of geran- 

 iums. Take a geranium which has many 

 branches. From the tip of a branch 

 measure down about six inches. Make 

 a slantwise cut through or just be- 

 low a node (where the leaf jck.s the 

 branch). 



After the cut is made take the new geran- 

 ium plant-to-be in your hand and pick 

 off from it all but its two terminal leaves. 

 Now the cutting is ready to plant. Make 

 a little sandy cutting-bed in a sheltered 

 spot and plant the geranium cuttings 

 there. Keep the bed quite moist. After 

 the cuttings have taken root pot them 

 into three-inch pots. If you notice any 

 color in the terminal bud between those 

 two leaves you left on, then pinch the bud 

 right off. Do not let the little cutting 

 waste its energy blossoming too soon. It 

 should be busily at work making roots. 

 Later in the winter it will blossom as it 

 should. Why not pot up some extra ones 

 for the school? 



