The Garden Magazine 



Sweet Corn in October! — Perhaps some of 

 the " Neighbors " do not realize that they may 

 enjoy two of the garden's choicest vegetables as 

 late as the second week in October. Last year 

 my family feasted for two weeks on Golden 

 Bantam Com planted July thirteenth; and 

 October 12th our man picked a peck of peas 

 (First-of^All) from seed planted August 17th. 

 Of course, the peas were a gamble, still we have 

 succeeded both times with peas planted in the 

 middle of August and one feast of them repays 

 fully the small labor of planting. It is neces- 

 sary to use an early variety. Words fail to 

 describe the corn. We have always con- 

 sidered Golden Bantam the best corn grown, 

 though it seems rather dry at times, but this 

 last late planting is juicy and delicious. — G. G. 

 Bell, New Rochelle, N. Y. 



A Phonograph Advertises this Flower Shop. 

 — In advertising my Roadside Garden last 

 summer I found a loud-toned phonograph 

 to be an invaluable aid. The machine was 

 placed upon a small table under the maples 

 separating the garden from the road. My 

 little sister (another important auxiliary to 

 the flower shop) found great sport in operating 

 it. The music, mostly loud band selections, 

 attracted the attention of autoists as well as 

 other travelers. They would come into the 

 shade of the trees and stop to hear the Music, 

 after which they generally became interested 

 in the flowers. Not infrequently did people 

 who otherwise would never have stopped 

 take away large purchases of flowers, as a 

 result of the talking machine's use. — Buford 

 Reid, Arkansas. 



Dahlias Don't Flower? — Some of the 

 Garden Neighbor's in various sections have 

 referred to the failure of their Dahlias in 1916: 

 and I do not know any one here who succeeded 

 with them last year. I had a dozen or more 

 blooms, but most of the buds rotted. In my 

 garden and other gardens that I had an op- 

 portunity to observe closely the cause was a 

 pale green creature called, in an old number of 

 The Garden Magazine, the frog hopper or 

 spittle bug. This insect lives on the under 

 sides of the leaves and sucks the life out of the 

 plant. The magazine recommended spraying 

 with whale oil soap or kerosene emulsion, be- 

 ginning early in the season. I found this in- 

 formation during the winter while looking over 

 some old numbers of The Garden Magazine 



and I do not recall what number it was, but I 

 intend to try the remedy. — Mrs. H. Bruce 

 Rouzer, Minneapolis. 



— Miss Sarah E. Brody (December issue) "has 

 it" on all of us Dahlia fanciers in this part 

 of the world as the plants here were almost 

 a total failure, I having about 75 plants 

 and not a dozen blooms! Even our Gladi- 

 olus failed; Nasturtiums too; Pansies and 

 Sweet Peas just dried up because of no 

 rain from June 20th to August 1st — forty 

 days. My young Rose garden, having 

 about seventy -five bushes, was a treat, 

 as it bloomed all summer and fall. I 

 have coldframes full of perennials such as 

 Gaillardias, Pinks, Pansies, Hollyhocks, Car- 

 nations, Snapdragons, Asters, Foxgloves, 



Make More Home Gardens! 



"I salute our splendid army of 

 home gardeners. They are fighting 

 Kaiserism along with our troops in 

 France. But we must not sit back 

 and congratulate ourselves. We 

 must begin now to lay our plans to 

 quadruple, or at least triple, that 

 army next year. The battalions of 

 home gardeners will need reserves 

 or fresh recruits, for if in wartime 

 the home garden is a national neces- 

 sity, in time of peace it will be a 

 valuable national asset." 



Carl Vrooman 



Assistant Secretary of Agriculture 



Columbine, Coreopsis and Canterbury Bells. 

 I have no greenhouse, but I have a hotbed 3 

 feet by 16 feet which I start in February. I 

 read the Garden Magazine from one end to 

 the other, except about shrubs as outside of 

 Roses I do not care for shrubs. I do not forget 

 you when I buy a seed or plant — I say: "Gar- 

 den Magazine." — R. Houdek, Illinois. 



School of Plant Material. — Very wel- 

 come is the announcement that the rich col- 

 lections of growing plants in the Arnold 

 Arboretum will be made use of during July 

 and August in a course in "plant materials" 

 offered in the Summer School of Harvard 

 University. The rich amount of material thus 

 available is not generally realized and it is indeed 



309 



a worthy object to make the greatest possible 

 use of the Arboretum as a working laboratory 

 for this demonstration which will be under the 

 direction of Mr. Stephen F. Hamblin. 



A Simple Way to Plant Potatoes. — The 

 other day I was told about a simple, practical 

 little device in planting potatoes which would 

 suit the man who had only a small area to 

 plant. After the furrow had been plowed, the 

 man came carrying a sack with seed potatoes 

 and had in his hand a water spout wide enough 

 to allow the seed potato to go through. He 

 used this spout as a staff and set it down in the 

 place where he wanted the potato to lodge, and 

 dropped the potato through the spout to this 

 spot. In this simple way he kept the potatoes 

 from running around and without the tiresome 

 effort of every time bending his back got it to 

 lodge in the right place. — T. Woods Beckman, 

 Altoona, Pa. 



"Blow -Torch" as a Garden Weapon. — 

 After several seasons of having my squash 

 vines ruined by the big "stink" (gray-black) 

 bugs, during which time I tried in every way 

 to overcome them, I accidentally hit upon a 

 practice that was successful from the start. 



"Stink" bugs always appear in colonies, 

 I noted that each colony, at first, confined it- 

 self to but part of a hill — even part of one vine 

 — and also that in the early morning each 

 colony would be found clustered on a few 

 leaves, the idea came to me of using fire to 

 destroy them wholesale. I first tried a 



kerosone-soaked rag on stick torch and it 

 worked very well, except that the flame was too 

 uncontrolled. I then bought a gasolene blow- 

 torch (such as electricians use) and found it 

 worked perfectly. The flame from this torch 

 is concentrated and so hot that a blast or two 

 from it will kill instantly an entire colony and 

 also bake the unhatched eggs with no greater 

 injury to the squash vines than the scorching 

 of a few leaves, which seems in no way to 

 check the growth of the vines. 



Next year I used the blow-torch on the 

 striped squash bug, also, but in a little more 

 painstaking way, for the striped fellows usually 

 come early and in swarms when they first re- 

 turn from winter quarters, and do their great- 

 est damage while the squash plants are still 

 small. To protect the young plants from any 

 loss of leaves through scorching by the blow- 

 torch flame, I would drop an old pan over the 



