26 FERTILIZERS AND 
particulars of growing. Perhaps there are no dahlia 
shows within hundreds of miles of your garden. Grow 
your plants exactly as if absolutely bent upon capturing 
all the first prizes at an exhibition where competitors 
are many and competent, and you will cause your entire 
community to sit up and not only take notice, but buy 
your wonderful roots. The deep bottom soil can be 
mixed with well-rotted compost, sods, and fibrous loam. 
One quarter bulk of such additions will work wonders. 
If you have unlimited supply of good loam fill the entire 
depth of your trenching with it, mixing fertilizers and 
any soil that is better than the rest in the upper twelve 
inches. Remember that it is "Pike's peak or bust" 
with your rivals. You can capture prizes if you are 
willing to take pains enough. Apply one hundred 
pounds of bone meal to every three hundred square feet, 
mixing it thoroughly with the soil, and if you can do 
this in the autumn, just before freezing weather, your 
chances of success are ever so much better. If you 
cannot do this it will pay well to compost the bone meal 
in a pile, leaving it to the rains and frosts of winter. At 
planting time it will be instantly available for the plant 
roots. One of the most famous and successful gardeners 
of the United States added to every bushel of bone meal 
three of leaf mould, or of loamy soil, and proved that 
this increased fertilizing values about twenty per cent. 
Where frosts are not likely until after the dahlia 
shows, which are usually held about the 25th of Sep- 
