336 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



July, 1913 



beans, radishes, tomatoes, and the other 

 annuals — you can save the seed with 

 perfect peace of mind. 



Let all the asparagus shoots grow and 

 give them plenty of encouragement in 

 the form of salt, liquid manure or nitrate 

 of soda, and cultivation. 



When crops begin to mature too late to 

 admit a succession sowing, start a cover 

 crop just as you do in the orchard. Crimson 

 clover will not only build up the soil, but 

 will supply you with some very beautiful 

 blossoms later on — a type rarely seen 

 in house decoration but almost invariably 

 admired. 



By the way, here is a field for investiga- 

 tion the whole summer through — dainty, 

 artistic, inexpensive: Try to devise new 

 color schemes, combinations and arrange- 

 ments of blossoms for house beautification. 

 Take into consideration the season, the 

 architecture of the house, the style and 

 arrangement of the furniture, the wall 

 paper, your own personality — oh, there 

 is a lot in this simple little amusement. 



Heterogeneous Hints 



JULY is a good canning month. Get 

 a "blue flame" kerosene oil stove, 

 set it out under the trees and do your 

 preserving without the usual personal 

 discomfort. Write to the Department of 

 Agriculture at Washington for Farmers' 

 Bulletins 205, 359, and 426 on canning 

 and preserving that tell the whole story 

 in small space, and simple terms. 



Any time is the time to doctor trees that 

 need it. As in human or veterinary or 

 any other kind of surgery, disinfection is 

 the keynote. Use some coal tar prepara- 

 tion or carbolic acid solution freely; in 

 filling cavities, chisel out every bit of 

 diseased tissue; and never leave an opening 

 or an unpainted scar or cut surface through 

 which spores of rot and decay can enter. 



Worms have a distinct place in agri- 

 culture according to Darwin, and ants 

 too may be useful, but they occasionally 

 disfigure a lawn till they simply have to 

 be done away with. For ants, find the 

 nests and pour into them boiling water or 

 a few teapoonsful of carbon bisulphide. 

 The creation of acetylene gas has also 

 proven effective. Drop a few pieces of 

 calcium carbide such as is used for automo- 

 bile and bicycle lamps, in the nest, pour 

 some water into it and stop up the opening. 



If you are away from home for some 

 weeks and the weeds invade your paths, 

 one way to get them out is to scatter dry 

 rubbish over them for a few days, then burn 

 it off. A little care will prevent any injury 

 to the border and the ashes can be swept 

 on to the grass with beneficial results. 



Otherwise all rubbish should go on the 

 compost pile, except, perhaps lawn clip- 

 pings which make a splendid mulch for 

 roses, tomatoes, asparagus and shrubs. 



The time to weed and cultivate is the 

 early morning, not only for your own sake, 

 but because the weeds can be thoroughly 



baked all day and prevented from going 

 back into the soil. 



As August is almost a repetition of July 

 so far as gardening goes, there is only one 

 thing to look ahead to: Get your order for 

 autumn bulbs made out. 



Why to Spray in July 



TNSECTS are not very fierce just now, 

 *■ but there is a little spraying to do. The 

 main treatment for all fungous enemies of 

 fruits is mentioned on the preceding page. 

 Use hellebore for the currant worm; 

 potassium sulphide for the gooseberry mil- 

 dew; tobacco dust or lime for bugs on 

 melons and squashes; bordeaux mixture 

 for potato rot and scab and the equally 

 destructive rot of the tomato. 



News and Comment 



IS A STATE STYLE OF GARDENING 

 POSSIBLE ? 



THE highest ideal that any community 

 can cherish is to have a character of 

 its own, and this must always depend 

 largely upon the native trees and shrubs. 

 For instance, Scotland owes her wonderful 

 picturesqueness to her native heather, 

 rowan, birch, and Scotch pine. England's 

 peculiar charm is largely due to the Eng- 

 lish oak, English yew, and English holly. 

 New England is full of local color, witness 

 her white pines, American elms, red cedars, 

 and junipers. The South has a charm of 

 her own, owing to her magnolias, live 

 oaks, American holly and other broad- 

 leaved evergreens. And now the prairie 

 is eagerly striving to achieve a prairie style 

 of landscape gardening. Perhaps the most 

 important plants yet discovered for in- 

 tensifying the prairie feeling, are the native 

 hawthorns and crabapples, because their 

 horizontal branches repeat so beautifully 

 the dominant lines of the prairie. 



Illinois is ambitious to have an Illinois 

 style of landscape gardening and is per- 

 haps the first state consciously to conceive 

 such an ideal. Of course, no state may 

 expect to add any important new principles 

 of design; it must get its local color by 

 planting chiefly its own natiye trees, 

 shrubs, and perennial flowers. Illinois 

 has already done enough to demonstrate 

 that a state style is possible. Examples 

 are the prairie river and rose garden in 

 Humboldt Park, Chicago; the Rubens 

 water garden at Glencoe; the Loeb bird 

 garden; Mr. Clow's estate near Lake 

 Forest; and "The Clearing" at Ravinia 

 — all designed by Mr. Jensen. Mr. 

 Simonds' work at Graceland Cemetery, 

 Sinissippi Farm, the Higginbotham estate 

 at Joliet, and in many places at Winnetka, 

 contains much local color and both have 

 helped build up a state pride in Illinois 

 gardening. The Hutchinsons at Lake 

 Geneva have a meadow filled with prairie 



flowers and a wood in which local plants 

 have produced wonderful pictures. 



Every state can hasten the process of 

 finding a perfect and unique beauty by 

 encouraging various forces to work to- 

 gether. There should be at least one 

 arboretum or botanical garden where all 

 the plants native to the -state may be 

 studied by architects, botanists, entomolo- 

 gists, foresters, horticulturists, landscape 

 gardeners and painters. There should 

 be at least one testing ground for each 

 important climate and soil type within the 

 state. Every state should publish a state 

 flora. The state university should have 

 model homes and grounds to illustrate 

 the state style of domestic architecture 

 and gardening. The nurserymen should 

 have show grounds, illustrating solutions of 

 all typical problems with native materials. 

 Real estate promoters should save the 

 native vegetation when subdividing. 



WHAT GOOD SEED IS WORTH 



V\7"HY do so many gardeners insist on 



» * buying cheap, unreliable, worthless 

 seed? They would never think of turning 

 chickens or cutworms or soft rot loose among 

 their crops to decrease the yields by a half or 

 more. Yet year after year they buy low 

 priced seed from irresponsible sources, har- 

 vest a fraction of a crop of mediocre quality 

 and fool themselves into calling it economy! 



They may buy unlimited fertilizers, 

 spray materials and tools; they may labor 

 to improve the soil and increase the mois- 

 ture content; they may look to the cli- 

 mate, the topography, and other environ- 

 mental conditions; but rarely do they aim 

 at larger crops and better quality along 

 that most natural and least expensive course 

 — hereditary tendencies. 



How important are these? Listen. The 

 Pennsylvania State Experiment Station 

 has been working for four years with some 

 two dozen strains of nine varieties of cab- 

 bage seed. Between the yields of the best 

 and the poorest is an average difference of 

 more than seven tons per acre ! The weight 

 of a head of Jersey Wakefield, for instance 

 varies from .95 to 1.72 pounds, and the 

 yield per acre from 6.93 to 10.76 tons; the 

 heads of Early Spring vary from 1.70 to 

 2.77 pounds apiece and the yield from 6.60 

 to 15.43 tons per acre, according to the 

 "family." All the varieties tested, both 

 early and late show similar variation. 



Seed of all strains — good and bad — 

 is for sale and, unfortunately, all are 

 bought. We have no desire to "injure 

 legitimate business," but we would like 

 to see the traffic in weak, impure, worthless 

 seed languish and die. You can help bring 

 this about by patronizing well-known, 

 widely advertised, thoroughly honest con- 

 cerns and, if you use home grown seed by 

 taking it only from the strongest, most 

 productive plants; but the best results will 

 usually be had by relying on the seed spec- 

 ialist because he harvests only from plants 

 specially raised for seed purposes. 



