406 
Tuberous Begonias for the Home. 
There are few classes of plants that 
have the great variety of form, coloring 
and habit of growth that the Begonias 
have. There are the luxuriant Rex va¬ 
rieties with their wonderful beauty of 
shape in the leaf, with their lustrous 
blendings of jade and silver, agate, bronze 
and gold. There are the fibrous rooted, 
or more common but still variedly beauti¬ 
ful sorts, easily reproduced, as are the 
Rex varieties, by cuttings of stalk or leaf, 
which obligingly throw out roots when 
placed in water or damp sand. 
Many people have a great admiration 
for the tuberous-rooted Begonias, and 
their kin, the lialf-tuberons, or hybrid 
forms, with their dainty, vine-like foliage 
and their surmounting masses of waxen, 
ruby-tinted flowers. Unfortunately a large 
proportion of their admirers consider that 
the two latter classes thrive only with 
greenhouse culture, and thus miss one of 
the finest plants the amateur may enjoy. 
Begonias, tuberous-rooted ones, will 
thrive most satisfyingly in the home. To 
be sure, they will not flourish with all 
sorts of conditions and discouragements, 
as will the geranium. But given the soil 
that they like, and plenty of moisture, 
they will grow amazingly and blossom 
profusely. Their needs are not at all 
difficult to supply. To begin with, get a 
good-sized root or tuber. They range in 
price from eight cents to 15 cents each, 
varying with the size, variety and the firm 
that sells them. The shades of color are 
particularly beautiful, pale yellow, deep 
orange, pure white, salmon pink, rose 
pink, deep red, and the flowers are both 
single and double. The latter look like 
huge waxen roses, but do not bloom quite 
so freely as the single varieties. The lat¬ 
ter now have newer forms that are 
fringed, half doubled, and fluted, with 
shaded colorings that are simply gorgeous 
in effect when in bloom. They will con¬ 
tinue to send up new flower clusters from 
the axil of each new leaf, as the plant 
grows, thus prolonging the blooming sea¬ 
son sometimes for three months. 
By potting the tubers in February, 
March or April they may be made to fur¬ 
nish a wealth of decoration through the 
Spring and Summer mouths, or by keep¬ 
ing them dormant until in May or June 
you can have them for Fall and early 
Winter. It is a good plan to pot a couple 
at a time and bring them on in a succes¬ 
sion from Spring until early Winter. 
They should be planted in rather 
small, shallow pots, in soil composed of 
half leaf mold, and nearly half a rich 
dark loam, with a little sand. The soil 
should be sifted once or twice thoroughly, 
to make it fine, soft and light. No rotted 
manure need be added, but when growth 
is well begun, which may be from 10 days 
to two weeks, liquid manure of nearly 
any sort, well diluted, will make them 
respond beautifully if applied once or 
twice a week. Be careful that you do not 
set the tubers out bottom side up. The 
slightly hollowed or concave side is the 
top. They should be placed only deep 
enough so the soil will not quite cover 
their tops, with the tuber in a slight de¬ 
pression in the center of the pot, so that 
it may absorb the water better. 
The temperature of any comfortable 
living-room is well adapted to their 
needs. They remind us of the needs of 
our own lungs, and our general health, 
when they sicken because of too dry an 
atmosphere, so often found in coal-heated 
homes. They should never be allowed to 
become perfectly dry. Frequent shower- 
baths are their delight, and the keeping 
of pans of water on our radiators or 
stoves insures an atmosphere suited to 
them. The usual dry atmosphere in 
homes heated by coal fires causes a dry¬ 
ness, unless careful attention is given to 
the moisture question, that is injurious to 
human breathing organs and general tem¬ 
pers, to say nothing of the furniture. So 
the keeping of the Begonias in a state of 
health will be beneficial to all concerned. 
Unless we wish the plants to rest from 
blooming, we should never let them get 
real dry in the po(s. 
Those I have in my collection were 
photographed when the first blooms 
opened, and continued for many weeks 
after, increasing in size and beauty. The 
flowers, many of them, measured four to 
five inches across, and were so heavy they 
could hardly hold up their faces. The 
only poor luck I ever had with them, and 
THE RURAL NEW-YcmKKR 
I have raised them successfully several 
seasons, was with a particularly hand¬ 
some specimen that I placed in a cold 
paper and stored it 
frost for the Winter, 
they won’t increase 
safely away from 
Managed this way 
in size, and are soon 
TUBEROUS BEGONIAS, SHOWING 
hall window. Result, every flower was 
dropped. But in general, if a room is 
comfortable to sit in it will suit the 
plants as to temperature. A thing that 
HABIT OF BLOOM. 
worn out. But I know of a tuberous 
rooted Begonia that is 20 years old, and 
of a mammoth size. Its owner’s custom 
has been to let it bloom as long as it will, 
WELL-GROWN TUBEROUS BEGONIA. 
will be new to many flower lovers is that 
a tuber may be used year after year, if 
managed rightly, and made to increase in 
size to a remarkable extent. I used to 
with 
Tk 
plenty of liquid food and good care, 
en she sets it away on the top shelf of 
her cupboard, when only partly dried out. 
She sprinkles the soil occasionally during 
March 28, 
with some as described. Kept moist in a 
. , . •'***•' ; ‘r 'S*. i.-W - 
sunny window it soon puts out now 
growth, and is a wonder to all beholders. 
These Begonias do not require sunshine 
all day; in fact, they are better off with¬ 
out tin' direct rays during the heat of the 
day. The same general treatment will 
suffice for the new hybrid forms, chief of 
which in beauty and ease of culture is 
the wonderful Gloire de Lorraine, with its 
wealth of dawn-flushed, waxen flowers, so 
abundantly produced as almost to hide 
the delicate foliage. A small 10-cent 
plant of this kind will yield generous 
blossoms if treated as described, and will 
develop into a large plant, with intermit¬ 
tent seasons of rest and recuperation 
after periods of growth and exhaustive 
bloom. m. G. F. 
aa-£>. S «. a. iVsJu 
PLANTING THREE KINDS OF PEAS TOGETHER. 
Three-storied Pea Vines, 
A succession of early, second early and 
late peas from one planting in the same 
row is a most economical and satisfactory 
method for the home garden. In this way 
an unsightly row of spent early pea vines, 
a harbor for weeds, is entirely done away 
with, and in short-season climates like 
ours, Western Maine, we cannot raise 
successfully two crops on the same ground 
during the season. 
I plant my pears on well-cultivated and 
fertilized land that is retentive of moist¬ 
ure. The rows to be planted are fur¬ 
rowed wide and several inches deep with 
a liberal supply of phosphate scattered 
the entire length, covering it well with 
earth, so that the seed will not come in 
contact with the fertilizer. Stout stakes 
are driven through the middle of each 
row from six to (fight feet apart; on these 
poultry netting three to four feet wide 
is stretched about six inches from the 
ground. By this method seed can be 
planted on each side of the netting, thus 
giving an equal stand on both sides of the 
wire. I use the following proportion for 
planting: One quart of Nott’s Excelsior 
to one pint each of Gregory’s Excelsior 
and Dwarf Champion. As soon as the 
young plants have broken ground the 
earth is drawn around them, thus produc¬ 
ing vigorous stocky plants able to be self- 
supporting until they reach the netting. 
Gregory’s Excelsior being a taller pea 
than the Nott’s Excelsior, does not crowd 
or reduce the crop of the latter in the 
least, and the last pod can be picked by 
the time the Gregory’s Excelsior is on, 
while the Dwarf Champion, having a 
branching habit, occupies the space left 
by the declining earlier varieties. 
From three rows of equal length, one 
planted with the three varieties mixed, 
one with Gregory’s Excelsior, and the 
third with Dwarf Champion, the one 
planted with (ho mixed varieties yielded 
twice as much as either of the two rows. 
By careful selection of my Nott’s Ex¬ 
celsior seed I have nearly doubled the size 
of the pods from those first grown; in 
fact our grocer could scarcely believe that 
they wore not peas of a standard variety. 
1 have excluded all the second early peas 
from my garden except Gregory’s Excel¬ 
sior, as it is as early and much more 
prolific than the tall, loose-growing Grad- 
us, Thomas Laxtou and Early Morn. 
The Everbearing and Champion of Eng¬ 
land I plant in the old-fashioned country 
way in the potato patch, eight to nine 
pens in every other hill in two rows, 
skipping every third row, the potato 
stalks giving sufficient support for the 
trailing vines without any apparent in¬ 
jury to the potato crop. 
Maine. MYRA D. SCAL1CS. 
think that a root could be used but one or 
two seasons successfully. After each 
blooming period I dried off the tuber, re¬ 
moved it from the pot. wrapped it. in 
the Winter, so that it does not become 
perfectly dry. In March she removes the 
loose soil from around tin* tuber, with¬ 
out disturbing the latter, replacing it 
Timid Youth : “What do I have to 
pay for a marriage license?” Facetious 
Clerk: “Well, you get it on the install¬ 
ment plan.” Timid Youth: “How’s that?” 
Facetious Clerk : “Ten shillings down and 
most of your salary each week for the 
rest of your life.”—Tit-Bits. 
Johnny, who is the son of a commuter 
gardener, knows the vegetables in the 
garden in the only true way. Johnny’s 
father thought it a sign of extreme pre¬ 
cocity that a four-year-old should tell a 
potato from a tomato. Just to show his 
neighbor he ordered Johnny to fetch a 
potato from tin' garden. Johnny did it. 
“How do you tell a potato from a to¬ 
mato?” asked the neighbor. “A potato 
lias black bugs,” Johnny answered, “and 
a tomato has green.”—N. Y. Evening 
Post. 
