Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1231 
/ 
Horticultural Notes 
Robust Pumpkin Vine 
Perhaps you remember the squash 
story of last year—277 pounds from 
two seeds planted 23 feet apart? An¬ 
other experiment is shown in the picture. 
I am trying to find out how much room 
nature will use to my profit in maturing 
any crop. This year I put one sugar 
pumpkin seed in an open space, and en¬ 
close the photograph showing result. 
When the vines reached 35 feet north 
and south and the same east and west, I 
nipped the ends. Today there are 23 
pumpkins still growing, the full weight 
of which I will have later. Four seeds 
would have covered a strip 100 feet long 
and 33 feet wide and given more fruit 
than could have been possible from 40 
seeds. The time has come to stop crowd¬ 
ing and give Mother Nature a chance to 
spread herself .to our profit. Those 
pumpkins will go better than 150 pounds. 
Does this lesson apply all along the line? 
If so, our text-books want revising. 
Maine. g. m. twitciiell. 
Notes from a Maryland Garden 
The Guernsey lilies appeared Septem¬ 
ber 13. It is odd to see the naked 
flower stalks shooting up from the bare 
ground without a leaf in sight. All 
Summer there is not the slightest sign 
there are absolutely no potatoes on them. 
This is not to be wondered at, as there 
has been no rain since August 3, and 
this is September 20. What keeps things 
not irrigated alive is hard to understand. 
My Irish potatoes are outside the irri¬ 
gation pipe. One can dig into the ground 
a foot or more and find no indication of 
moisture, and yet the Cannas flare their 
big leaves as fresh-looking as though 
growing in a swamp. 
My daughter, who recently visited Cen¬ 
tral North Carolina, says that the crops 
in the red clay hills are pitiful. Corn 
about five feet high on land where it 
would naturally grow 10 feet, and cotton 
less than knee high where a bale should 
be made an acre. Cotton is certain to go 
to a high figure, but that is little conso¬ 
lation to the man who does not make a 
third of a crop. If Europe could afford 
to buy cotton would go back to 40 cents 
by Spring, but with pound sterling worth 
but little over $3 and German marks a 
cent apiece they cannot buy. And the 
man who brought all this ruin on the 
world is living in luxury, safe from the 
people whom he ruined and the nations 
he plundered. w. F. massey. 
Kniffen System of Training Vines 
In training a grapevine according to 
the Kniffen system, are all the buds on 
One Pumpkin Vine 11 
of growth. Then the stalk with the 
pretty cluster of flowers appears over 
night, and soon after the dark green 
leaves with a white stripe down the mid¬ 
dle appear, and keep green all Winter; 
but as soon as the soil warms up in June 
they wither and disappear. It is rather 
difficult to get the bulbs at the right time, 
for the only time to plant them is in 
early July. Florists who grow them in 
pots in the North are about the only ones 
who have them at planting time. IIow 
far North they are hardy I do not know. 
But here, while they stand any Winter, 
a hard Winter seems to prevent their 
blooming the next Fall. It seems that 
the nascent flower buds are destroyed, 
while the vegetative power of the bulbs 
is uninjured. In the terrible Winter of 
1917-18, when the ground froze deeply 
and froze the water pipes in the street, 
the Nerines kept green, but failed to 
bloom the next Fall. It seems that the 
green Winter leaves are forming the 
flower buds within the bulbs, and they 
fail to do so in extreme cold weather. 
It would seem that the best way to grow 
them is in the grass of the lawn. 
This terrible drought has shown the 
value of the Bermuda grass. Of course 
it is not desirable in cultivated land, but 
as a permanent pasture for our sandy 
soils it is very valuable. Now that the 
Blue grass is burnt brown and the lawns 
can only be kept alive by irrigation, the 
dense sod of Bermuda along some of our 
roadsides testifies to its resistance to 
heat and drought. I passed a plot of it 
on a suburban roadway this morning 
where it has almost entirely covered the 
cement sidewalk. Uncut and ungrazed, 
the grass stands a foot deep, browning a 
little on top, but green below, and in a 
lot not far away, where it has been pas¬ 
tured for years, it still gives a good bite, 
while other grasses give none. 
The late Irish potatoes have tops green 
and flourishing in spite of the absolutely 
parched soil, but examination shows that 
ith Room To Stretch 
the upright main trunk rubbed off except 
those which you want saved for the four 
lateral arms? All diagrams that I have 
seen show the main trunk with four lat¬ 
eral arms. To prevent other laterals 
from developing it seems to me that all 
other buds must be removed. Then, as I 
understand the system, the buds on the 
four laterals are allowed to develop and 
are trained up to the cross wires or trel¬ 
lis supports. This works all right for 
one or two seasons, but how do you renew 
the old vine and make a new start, pro¬ 
vided all buds on the main trunk have 
been destroyed? m. k. S. 
Uxbridge Mass. 
In training to the single-stem four- 
cane Kniffen method, all but a few buds 
that arise in the vicinity of the wire 
levels are rubbed or broken off early in 
the season. This presupposes that the 
vines are but recently planted, and the 
training of them has just commenced. 
It is well that perhaps twice as 
many shoots are allowed to develop as 
will eventually be used, as some may be 
lost through accident. After the general 
form of the vine has been established, 
from two to four spurs of two buds each 
are left to provide the one-year fruiting 
canes of each season. These spurs will 
have developed the season immediately 
preceding, and will provide the necessary 
fruiting wood. Canes growing from such 
spurs are usually better fruiting canes 
than those that chance to come from the 
older trunk. After the pruning each year 
there should remain four canes of the past 
season’s growth, two at each wire level 
or thereabouts, and also two or more 
spurs at the same locations of two or 
three buds each. By following this plan 
desirable fruiting wood is always avail¬ 
able. F. E. GLADWIN. 
Marjorie’s little brother asked what 
she had learned in Sunday school. 
“Well,” she replied, “I learned that all 
our days are numbered.” “Pshaw!” ex¬ 
claimed the little questioner. “I think 
that anybody who ever saw a calendar 
would know that.”—Detroit News. 
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