— replaces 

 the horse 



It plows — harrows - 



- cultivates. 



lawns, mows 



loads — does any one horse 



work at % horse cost — 



also 4 h. p. belt work. 



It mows 

 hay, hauls 



Be Independent of Hired 

 Outfits 



/^ET a Beeman and have the power of one horse or a 4 

 ^-* h. p. gas engine ready whenever and wherever vou 

 need it — dependable, economical power. A big help the 

 year 'round to suburbanites, truck gardeners, orchardists, 

 farmers, managers of country estates, golf clubs, etc. 

 Solves labor problem. 



2 h. p. on drawbar, 4 h. p. on belt — S. A. E. Rating. 

 The Beeman is the original garden tractor- — fully 

 developed, time-tested, thousands in use. 

 FREE — Interesting booklet illustrating many uses of the 

 Beeman Tractor. Write for it. 



Beeman Tractor Company 



337 Sixth Avenue South 

 Minneapolis, Minn. 



The Glen Road Iris Gardens 



Grace Sturtevant, Prop. 



Wellesley Farms, Massachusetts 



GROWERS AND ORIGINATORS OF FINE VARI- 

 ETIES OF BEARDED IRIS 



KELLOGG'S 

 1920 



STRAWBERRY BOOK 



GUT 

 DOWN 



'It you want to cut down the H. C. L.*^^° & 

 1 this year, write today for your copy of this 

 I big strawberry book. It pictures in colors^ 

 land fully describes the many prize-winning varieties I 

 I of KELLOGG PEDIGREE STRAWBERRY PLANTS and 



Kellogg Strawberry Gardens 



t Th is book tells how thousands of f amil ies are , j 



i getting the benefit of Kellogg Everbearing 

 L gardens the year 'round and making 

 k a big cash profit besides. This valu- 

 able book is FREE and post- 

 paid. Write today to 

 R. M. KELLOGG CO. 

 Box 20 6 

 _TlireB Rivers, Mith. 



The Modern Gladiolus 



THIS is to inform my friends and the expected new cus- 

 tomers, who will be my friends, that my new catalogue 

 of gladiolus bulbs is ready and will be sent out to all who 

 send request. I aim to keep up with the procession, and 

 offer all the best tested varieties of this most popular 

 flower, and I offer some new sorts, which are highly 

 recommended, for us to try this year. After cutting out 

 a number of old sorts the list still contains about 125 

 named ones, besides choice mixtures. 



Geo. S. Woodruff 



Independence Iowa 



Always mention the Garden Magazine 



m*mB 



=^g£MSs^ 



An Early Start in the 

 Flower Garden 



Sg£3E3E3S 



IF YOU can start your flower beds with plants 

 having roots and stalks and leaves instead of 

 with seeds which the early rains may wash out 

 of the ground or a few days of dry weather slay 

 just as they are germinating, of course you will 

 have flowers earlier and therefore longer, and 

 much more certainly. 



Here is how one amateur does it — and every 

 item in the plan came originally from The 

 Garden Magazine, either through an article or 

 an advertisement. These are the ingredients: 



A box full of good soil put in the basement in 

 the fall. 



Two screens for sifting the soil. 



A number of twelve-inch square clay seed pans 

 — wooden flats will do, but are not so good. 



An outfit for making paper flower pots. 



A small coldframe, made out of four boards 

 and an ordinary three-by-six storm sash. 



The first operation in the year's work, which 

 is also the last of last year's work, comes in filling 

 a large box with good, light soil — a combination 

 of sandy loam and rotted manure. Your soil 

 needn't be very rich — shouldn't, indeed, be too 

 rich, because it is good to give the roots of your 

 seedlings rather slim diet so they will have to 

 spread wide to search out their food. 



The next operation is filling the seed pans, 

 which first involves sifting the soil through the 

 two screens — one an old ash-sifter with three- 

 eighth inch mesh, which takes out the pebbles, 

 and the other made of a fairly coarse mosquito 

 netting fastened by cleats and nails to a square 

 box fifteen inches in diameter. The coarse screen- 

 ings are discarded; the screenings from the 

 second operation are put in one box, the sifted 

 soil in another. Fill the seed pans with a half- 

 inch layer of gravel, broken-up clay pots or even 

 hard-coal ashes, then with the coarser earth left 

 from the last screening; and finish with a half- 

 inch or so of the finest soil. 



Next, make your paper pots. Here are the 

 materials for that: 



A wooden block two and a quarter inches 

 square and two and a half inches high, with a 

 three-eighths-inch hole bored through the centre 

 from top to bottom; 



A three-eighths inch bolt with a broad, flat 

 head, long enough to go through the block and a 

 board or work table top, to be clamped there 

 by screwing on a nut; 



A package of one-ounce tacks; 



A quantity of what the printers call 120 pound 

 tagboard, cut iij inches long and four inches 

 wide. 



My outfit I bought for a dollar from an adver- 

 tiser in The Garden Magazine — tagboard, 

 tacks, block, bolt and all; but you can make it 

 yourself easily enough. The block I use is fas- 

 tened to a discarded ironing board, which makes 

 a good working table laid across two upturned 

 boxes or barrels. 



Fold a tagboard strip closely around the block, 

 starting at the side nearest you. An inch of it 

 will extend above the block. Fold this down over 

 the block, fix a tack in the centre, and pound it in 

 with the hammer. The point, driven against the 

 head of the bolt curls up and clinches the fold; 

 and your box is made. 



Flat wooden boxes to hold the paper pots 

 when filled are convenient for handling them, 

 and are easily made in sizes fitting your needs. 

 Mine are made so as to hold forty-eight paper 



pots comfortably; and this size fits into the cold- 

 frame nicely. All of this work will provide plenty 

 of occupation for leisure hours during the winter 

 and your work in the really busy hours of spring 

 will be lightened. 



Along in March or early April, according to 

 your climate, water the seed pans, let them dry 

 a day or so until the soil is merely moist, and 

 then plant your seeds. Barely cover the smaller 

 ones by sifting soil over them and then pressing 

 down with a flat board, and be careful to cover 

 none of the seeds too deeply. 



Quick germination can be secured by putting 

 the seeds on heating pipes in the basement with a 

 pane of glass over them — germination often so 

 quick that you must watch them constantly and 

 remove them as soon as the seeds sprout, other- 

 wise they may shoot up to the glass in slender 

 spindling stalks. After the seeds have ger- 

 minated, put them in a sunny window, leaving 

 the glass on with a half-inch piece of wood under 

 for ventilation, and covering the glass with 

 cheesecloth for a couple of days while the sun is 

 upon them. 



Then — if you have timed your work properly — 

 as soon as the seedlings are well started move 

 them into the coldframe. Look to it carefully 

 that they are properly protected against frost 

 at night by warm coverings, and that there is 

 proper ventilation during the sunny hours. The 

 loss of a coldframe full of young seedlings through 

 oversight in leaving the top down during a sunny 

 day taught that lesson — every one was burned 

 to a crisp. 



When your seedlings have grown large enough 

 to transplant — when they have more than one 

 pair of leaves is time enough for any of them, 

 though some, such as Antirrhinums, will trans- 

 plant readily at almost any size, while some, 

 such as Poppies and Mignonette, won't stand 

 transplanting at all and cannot be handled in 

 this way — proceed with them thus: 



Put a pan full of seedlings on your work table, 

 with a supply of paper pots and a pan of fine soil 

 near at hand. If the seedlings have been thinned 

 out — or if you planted them thinly, as you should 

 — cut them out with a kitchen knife, leaving 

 as much earth as possible attached to the roots. 

 If they are growing thickly, wet the soil well so 

 you can separate the little plants without hurting 

 the roots. Fill a paper pot loosely two thirds 

 full of soil — you might have done this part during 

 the winter, if you had time and inclination — set a 

 plant in carefully, placing it so that the top of 

 the soil when the operation is complete will be 

 half an inch below the top of the pot; press the 

 soil down around the roots, and water thoroughly; 

 then fill in with soil and water again. 



When your plants are all in the pots, leave 

 them in your basement away from the sun for a 

 day or two; then set them in the coldframe, shad- 

 ing them from the sun during the warmest part 

 of the day for another day; keep them ventilated 

 and secure against late night frosts. 



When the time comes for setting them out, 

 if the earth in the pots is moist you can tear the 

 paper off and set out the ball of earth without 

 disturbing the roots, and the plant will keep 

 right on growing as though nothing had 

 happened. Plan to keep a surplus of plants to 

 fill in vacant spaces caused by cutworms or 

 other casualties. 



Stillman H. Bingham, Minn. 



302 



