126 
June, 1889. 
/ ORCHARD 
GARDEN \ 
MVwimm acM £^&oMA /w cj 
General Hints Tor June. 
As soon as the early peas are off. clean 
up the ground for another crop. Never al- 
low land in a garden, especially a home 
garden to be idle, and get full of weeds. 
The market gardeners understand this well, 
and the family garden should be as careful- 
ly cropped or even more so. Snap beans 
are always handy to till vacancies and su- 
gar corn should be planted in succession 
until the middle of July. About the 
last of the month put in a full crop of cu- 
cumbers for pickles. For this purpose the 
Green Prolific is best. The seedsmen now 
offer an Extra Early Green Prolific which 
those who have grown it say is superior 
and can be planted later than the old 
strain. Carrots can be sown until the mid- 
dle of the month and the Early Horn much 
later. Don't plant the long carrots for ta- 
ble use. They are only fit for stock food. 
Lima Beans frequently have to be twined 
up and tied to the poles. Do not neglect 
them until they are sprawling over the 
ground. The ground where Early Cabbage 
is now growing will probably be the place 
to reserve for the final planting of celery. 
Lettuce, if wanted during hot weather, 
should be sown at frequent intervals. The 
Deacon we have found to be the best sum- 
mer lettuce. Endive sown now ami trans- 
planted when large enough will make a 
good fall salad. It can easily be bleached as 
wanted for use by laying a piece of slate 
on top of each plant for a short time 
Transplanting of cabbage for fall and 
winter use will be inorder all through the 
month. We use Fottler's Brunswick main- 
ly for fall crop and Premium Flat Dutch for 
winter. July 1st we find early enough for 
this last if strong plants are set, and still later 
for those which are to be kept over winter. 
In transplanting garden plants of any 
kind it is bad practice to set them just af- 
ter a rain while the soil is mucky and wet. 
Better wait until the soil settles. In trans- 
planting keep the plants in a bucket of 
water, and set each one with its roots drip- 
ping wet, then press the earth tight with a 
dibble and they will do well even in quite a 
dry soil. The best way is to try to trans- 
plant just before a rain so as to have the 
plants well set by the moisture. Plants set 
in a vt rv wet soil get stunted by the bak- 
ing of the soil around them and the soil is 
injured too by handling when wet. Egg 
Plants should be set early in the month. It 
is better to have these strongly grown in 
flower pots if possible. 
Insects are now trouble.-ome. For the 
Colorado Potato Beetle we prefer London 
Purple mixed with plaster about one part 
of Purple to 50 parts of plaster. Dust it 
over the plants when the dew is on. The 
time for doing it is when the first brood 
of grubs are about all hatched out. The 
general practice now is to use all these 
arsenical poisons mixed with water and 
sprayed on with machines made for the 
purpose. Where large areas are gone over 
these are best but in the home garden I 
prefer the dry mixtrne. The green cab- 
bage worm sometimes succumbs to Pyre- 
thrum powdered. ButPyrethrum we have 
found to be uncertain as to quality, and 
lately I have not used anything on the cab- 
bage, simply endeavoring by heavy ma- 
nuring and rapid cultivation to make the 
cabbage grow faster than the worms can 
eat. And with good growing weather we 
can usually' accomplish this. In addition 
to a heavy dressing of barnyard manure 
before planting the cabbagesl give asprink- 
ling of superphosphate just before each 
working and find it cheaper and better than 
Pyretlirum. For the bugs which eat the 
young cucumber and melon plants when 
they first come up the sure cure is bone flour 
dusted over the hills. The bugs always 
vamose and the plants are benefitted. To 
drive off the little black flea-beetles (Hal- 
Thk Deacon Lettuce. Fig. 1126. 
tica) which devour young cabbage plants 
just as they emerge from the soil I use air 
slaked lime and pyretlirum powder mixed 
in equal parts. Dust it over as soon as the 
plants can be seen sprouting and repeat lat- 
er if necessary. In small gardens, where only 
a few plants are needed, cabbage seed can 
be sown in boxes placed on a platform elevat- 
ed six feet above the ground. Then the flea- 
beetles will not trouble them as they do not 
seem able to fly high. Here in Virginia we 
have the Harlequin Bug, which I believe 
has not gotten far North yet. It comes in 
July and every cabbage leaf bitten by it with 
e'rs and falls as though burned. But for the 
fact that it stays but a short time it would 
be impossible to grow cabbage where a 
swarm of these alights. But the plants 
will usually grow out after they leave and 
make a tolerable head. They seem partial 
in their ravages for I had two patches of 
cabbage in the same field, one of which 
was almost destroyed by the Harlequins 
while the other was scarcely touched. I 
propose to try kerosene emulsion on them 
this year as neither Paris green nor Pyre- 
thrum has any effect on them. 
Iq a neat garden it is a great saving of 
room to train up the tomatoes in some way, 
and there is no doubt but they will make 
more and better fruit if taken up off the 
ground, The galvanized wire netting 
which we have recommended for peas and 
beans is admirably adapted to this purpose, 
as the shoots can be trained backward and 
forward through the meshes as they grow, 
and tied occasionally. In forcing tomatoes 
under glass in winter I always train them 
on this wire netting. In fact I have hardly 
known a more useful article about a garden. 
Get Iteady for Celery. 
We have tried years ago the plan of shear- 
ing off the tops of celery plants in the beds 
to save transplanting, but we don't like it. 
Transplanted plants, in our experience, al- 
ways make better celery and transplant to 
their final quarters with greater ease and 
certainty. As soon as the seedlings are 
large enough to handle we nip off the long 
tap root one third or more and dibble them 
into a rich bed about two or three inches 
apart each way. We generally use an 
empty cold frame for this purpose so that 
we can lay over them a screen of laths as a 
protection from the hot sun. If you have 
not raised any plants now is the time to 
buy them. Those who raise celery plants 
in large quantities for sale can always af- 
ford to sell them, when thinning and trans- 
planting, for half or less than half what 
the same plants will be worth at final trans- 
planting time. Get the plants through as 
soon as possible and put them in the bed as 
directed until planting time, which in the 
middle States, where celery’ is grown only 
for winter use, should not be sooner than 
July 15th, and in Virginia not before Au- 
gust. In our next number we will give 
our way of growing celery. 
One Way to Grow Melons. 
One of the most successful growers of 
watermelons I ever knew was an old Ger- 
man. He put a vast amount of unneces- 
sary work on them merely for the sake of 
neatness, but the general outline of his 
culture was excellent. The land on which 
his melons were grown was a deep alluvial 
river bottom. He made no holes and filled 
them with manure as our common practice 
is, but depended upon his moist soil and 
the aid of stimulating fertilizers added 
in the course of their growth. His practice 
would probably not answer On a thin soil 
but on a deep alluvial was a great success. 
His practice was to plow the whole surface 
as shallow as possible merely to kill the 
sprouting weeds. lie then laid off rows with 
a large plow twelve feet apart. The plow 
was run twice in the furrow as deeply as 
possible and the furrow cleaned out and 
sloped back with shovels. Then a subsoil 
plow was run twice in each furrow loosen- 
ing the soil ten inches or more deeper. 
A little manure was then scattered 
lightly along the furrows and seeds planted 
eight feet apart in the bottom of the trench. 
As the plants grew the soil was carefully 
worked in about them, a sprinkling of good 
superphosphate being added before each 
