1914. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
lOl 
The Home Acre. 
NOTES FROM A MARYLAND GARDEN. 
I T is rather discouraging to write about 
gardening under present conditions. 
May and .Tune were intensely dry, but the 
first week in July gave us some nice 
showers, and we thought that the worst 
was over. But here is August 20, and we 
have had no rain to amount to more than 
a good dew since July 7. The soil is 
dry through and through, and it is useless 
to put seed in this sun-baked soil. I have 
a piece of ground stuffed with manure 
in which I intended to sow seed for the 
Fall crop of spinach early this month. 
But the seed is still in the sack, for it 
would simply cook it to put it in the 
soil. The early tomatoes have finally 
played out, and while the late ones still 
manage to keep green they are setting 
small fruits stunted for lack of moisture. 
The last planting of sugar corn tas- 
seled out in its piped-up leaves when 
two feet high, and is now drying up. By 
sowing in a frame and covering with a 
gunny sack I have managed to get some 
lettuce plants started by using the hose 
on the sack. For this Fall crop I use 
home-grown seed of the May King, which 
heads more quickly than the Big Boston, 
which I sow later for the frames. We 
manage to keep the lawn green and the 
flower beds watered with the hose, but it 
is a hopeless task to drag a hose all over 
the garden, even if it was long enough. 
The fact is that these dry seasons seem 
annually to grow worse, and we must 
adopt some reliable system of irrigation, 
for we are now as dry as California. I 
am planning to put in the Skinner system 
of overhead watering for another sea¬ 
son if the city water company will al¬ 
low me water at a reasonable cost. If 
not, we can drive a well about 20 feet 
and get all the water we want with a 
gasoline engine or a windmill and tank. 
On our low lands it is easy to get a 
flowing well at about 100 feet, but wheth¬ 
er we could get a well to flow on the 
higher land is doubtful. One bored re¬ 
cently on the low land to a depth of 107 
feet flowed 16 feet above the surface, 
and it may be possible by going deeper to 
get one to flow on the uplands which 
are not here many feet above this. 
We had a splendid bloom on the Gladi¬ 
oli, of which I have a plot of 2,000, but 
it looks as though the conns are ripening 
up untimely. The greatest show bed 1 
have now is one of the feathered cocks¬ 
comb called Pride of Castle Gould. These 
are wonderfully gay, and being in reach 
of the hose, are kept flourishing. The 
scarlet sage too is showy. I have the 
variety called Zurich, which is dwarfer 
and more early and prolific in bloom than 
any Salvia I have yet tried. I formerly 
grew the Bonfire variety, but find the 
Zurich better. While the plants are 
comparatively dwarf, the flower spikes are 
unusually long. 
In the shrubbery border the only thing 
now giving bloom 'is the Rose of Sharon, 
Hibiscus Syriaeus. I have the double- 
flowered one with bloom of the old rose 
color, a double white with purple base to 
the petals, and one pure white. In spite 
of the drought these are covered with 
bloom. 
Meehan’s Marvel mallows made a won¬ 
derful bloom, but are now about done, but 
the foliage still answers to hide an ugly 
board fence. Perennial Phlox are bloom¬ 
ing, but look as though it is to be their 
last, for there is little new growth start¬ 
ing from the base of the plants set this 
year. I have 250 of these planted last 
Spring, and I fear that there will be many 
of them lost entirely, simply exhausted 
in blooming and no new growth starting. 
Having over 100 plants, seedlings of 
Asparagus Sprengeri, I planted some as 
a border to a flower bed, and of all the 
things in the garden these have withstood 
the drought best. In a porch box I plant¬ 
ed these along the front and filled back 
of them with Begonia Vulcan, and the 
box has been a wonderful show all Sum¬ 
mer, as the porch awnings shelter it from 
the direct sun and we water it of course. 
The asparagus plants in the border I 
intend to leave out, and find out whether 
these ornamental kinds of asparagus are 
hardy like our edible sort. If they are . 
we will have found out something valua¬ 
ble. It has been a hard Summer on the 
Cannas, and if one should try to give 
the height of the varieties from this sea¬ 
son’s growth he would class all of them 
as dwarfs. 
As soon as we have rain enough I shall 
sow seed of the Phlox Drummondii for 
next Summer’s flowers. I find that they 
winter well and bloom earlier and fully 
as long as those sown in Spring. In 
fact I once had a plant to bloom in a 
mild January. 
The new Cardinal Climber I have on a 
wire fence 50 feet long, and it is gay with 
its scarlet flowers in the morning, clos¬ 
ing up in the afternoon. One has to 
look vex*y closely to find any seed pods, 
for unlike its parents, the Cypress vine 
and the scarlet morning-glory, it is a very 
shy seeder, and the seedsmen have been 
putting only 17 seeds in a 25-cent paper. 
I hope to spare them some seed this Sum¬ 
mer. 
An order for some thousands of small 
bulbs of Candidum lilies from the North 
of France have not come, and I fear will 
not get here, and I shall have to depend 
on my own stock alone, and as the North¬ 
ern seedsmen took the bulk of my bulbs 
last year I have been running short. We 
grow this lily here as well as the im¬ 
ported ones, and it is only a question of 
time when they will all be grown here. 
Maryland. w. F. MASSEY. 
Runners from Non-bearing Strawberries. 
R eplying to g. f. h., page 991 , he 
will be perfectly safe in using runners 
from non-bearing plants. Forty-four 
years ago I planted an acre of strawber¬ 
ries in a bearing orchard that had been 
in sod 15 years. When plowed the sod 
ws so tough that there was a hollow 
place under each furrow except where it 
was closed by the horses’ feet in harrow¬ 
ing. All the runners that rooted over 
those hollow places failed to blossom the 
next year, as such always do. From this 
bed I took up a large number of plants 
the following Spring when the bed was 
in bloom, and, as a matter of economy, 
the non-bearing plants were chosen. 
These were all planted for hill culture 
and it proved to be one of the most pro¬ 
ductive beds I ever raised. Runners 
produced so late in the Fall that they go 
into Winter quarters with roots only an 
inch or two in length usually fail to bear 
the following season, but they make 
plants in abundance—and good ones, too. 
Summit Co., Ohio. m. crawford. 
Winter Onions. 
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I HAVE a piece of ground about 100 
feet long, 50 feet wide, which I would 
like to put to onions for early Spring 
market. Let me know when and how 
to plant, variety and Winter protection. 
Hazel Green, Wis. e. k. 
In South Jersey the Egyptian top on¬ 
ion makes the best bunching soit for early 
Spring. Sets are planted from one to two 
inches apart in rows 12 to 18 inches 
asunder and they should be planted six to 
eight weeks before the ground freezes. 
Here no Winter protection is required. 
Where Winters are severe a mulch of 
straw or preferably strawy manure should 
be applied after the ground freezes. For 
Southern growers the white or yellow 
Multiplier onions would be best. These 
Multipliers are quite generally used in 
the South, while the Egyptian is given 
first place in the North for Fall planting. 
The Multipliers should be planted at least 
six weeks before freezing. Ground is 
usually furrowed out four or five inches 
deep and the bulbs set three to four inches 
apart in the row. Where Winters are 
severe a mulch should be used as de¬ 
scribed above. trucker, jr. 
Irrigating Strawberries. —On page 
993, S. B., Indiana, asks about a sys¬ 
tem of irrigation that is successful and 
practical in raising strawberries. We 
grow fine strawberries by surface ir¬ 
rigation in a country where there 
is but little rainfall. Make shallow 
ditches between the rows and allow the 
water to seep to the roots of the plants. 
Flooding must be avoided, as it would 
cause the soil to crust and do more harm 
than good. Gooseberries, raspberries and 
currants are a success when irrigated in 
this way. mrs. b. c. fay. 
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