208 



The Garden Magazine, January, 1920 



Telephone type. Of course none of the tall vining sorts are, 

 comparatively speaking, as prolific as Potlatch, Buttercup, 

 Dwarf Champion, etc. 



The more I hear about and see New Zealand spinach, the 

 more 1 am convinced of its value in the home garden. While 

 the individual leaf tip and branch slightly resemble those of 

 our ordinary spinach, the characteristics of the plant are 

 quite different. A well-developed specimen (and cutting 

 should not be started until plants are well developed) will 

 cover a space 4x5 ft. with a perfect mass of succulent 

 branches and leaves which will multiply as rapidly as cut; 

 and multiply is the proper term, for wherever you cut a tip, 

 three others will appear and the yielding power of a half 

 dozen plants is immense. A fifteen foot row will yield a 

 peck twice a week from July until the end of October. 



For many years we have casually known the squash called 

 Cocozelle Bush but only recently have the original intro- 

 ducers — Italian truckers — shown us how to use it. The 

 young fruits are offered in the market when they are hardly 

 larger than a cucumber — yet 1 have picked them when two 



feet long and six inches in diameter! At all stages of devel- 

 opment, it has a delicate flavor that makes it one of the best 

 of its tribe. Young, fried like eggplant, it beats that Solanum 

 in every way. Fully developed, baked or stewed, it has a 

 matchless flavor. And one row of a dozen plants will bear 

 uninterruptedly from July until frost, or till the squash bugs 

 say "finis." 



Among tomatoes, I have appreciated every quality of 

 every important variety introduced during the past quarter 

 century. But when the late Walter Stokes, twelve years 

 ago, gave us Bonny Best, he outdistanced all other kinds. 

 Prompted by the desire to create a type that would "grade" 

 well, or rather one that would make grading superfluous, 

 he first selected for uniform shape and size; incidentally, 

 solidity was striven after. Under the trying soil conditions 

 of sandy New Jersey the work was carried on and to-day 

 Bonny Best is unquestionably the greatest scarlet medium- 

 sized tomato for light soils in the world; and it is at the same 

 time a splendid yielder on other soils, even heavy clay. In- 

 deed Bonny Best surpasses all competitors. 



II. ANNUAL FLOWERS THAT THE GARDEN NEEDS 



'NNUALS are really very much worth while in the 

 year's garden scheme, for even though their season 

 be a short one they give the gardener a sure result; 

 I. and often under trying conditions (especially as in 

 the new garden) they are the standby for brilliant color and 

 plenty of flowers through the height 

 of summer and during the " in be- 

 tween" season of the perennial 

 border. So easy are annuals to 

 grow, after a fashion, that the in- 

 troduction of improvements goes 

 on without attracting attention 

 generally until by sheer merit the 

 newcomer at last forces through 

 and attains a place in the lists of 

 standards. For the American gar- 

 den, with living conditions among 

 us as they are, annuals have es- 

 pecially a real place. 



Suppose you are about to move 

 into a new home surrounded by 

 bare ground; suppose also that 

 the available soil is rather poor. 

 What will you do for flowers? The 

 answer should spell Annuals — for 

 beds, borders, backgrounds, cut- 

 ting, in all the colors and of all 

 types. 



The backward wet and cold 

 spring of 1919 saw the start of an 

 experiment delayed until the end 

 of May, when about eighty varieties 

 of Annuals, in about thirty classes, 

 were sown. The soil was the poor- 

 est, practically devoid of humus, 



held the moisture but a 

 every rain and the season 

 spells vied with hot, dry 

 and what survived the 

 torrents that followed. 



A SUMMER DAY REFRESHMENT OF BLUE AND 

 WHITE 



The flower that looks like a Daisy is the light blue Swan 

 River Daisy here keeping company with snowy dwarf 

 Alyssum, both being exceptional for carpeting the ground 



short time, and baked severely after 

 last year was abominable ! Cold wet 

 winds to make plant life miserable, 

 drought was washed away by the 

 Out of the lot of annuals on trial 

 about fifty survived; and these 

 would live and bloom anywhere 

 where a few inches of soil plus a 

 little sunshine and moisture com- 

 bine to make anything grow. 



Three stand out preeminently 

 above all others for cutting — ex- 

 cepting only Asters, to which spe- 

 cific reference is made later. These 

 are Gaillardia picta Lorenziana, 

 Salpiglossis Emperor and Scabiosa 

 Azure Fairy. 



The Gaillardias provide those 

 rich, deep brown and copper shades 

 so much admired in the very much 

 later blooming hardy Chrysanthe- 

 mums, and their "lasting" quali- 

 ties after cutting are surpassed 

 by no other loose-petaled flower. 

 The modern, large flowering Sal- 

 piglossis bring us some wonderful 

 combinations of purple and gold, 

 scarlet and gold, rose and gold, and 

 white and gold, besides straight 

 primrose, crimson, yellow, deep 

 blue, etc., etc. And beautiful 

 though the dark shades of Sca- 

 biosa, or old-fashioned Pin- 

 cushion Flower may be, the bright 

 blue of Scabiosa Azure Fairv, with 



