HOUSE AND GARDEN 
December, ign 
393 
Plants in the House 
During the dull, dark days of mid-win¬ 
ter, special care must be taken with the 
house plants. Do not over water. During 
this season most plants are resting and 
need just enough water to keep the pots 
from drying out. Plants in full bloom re¬ 
quire a little more, and may in many cases 
be given extra food, in the form of liquid 
manure or fertilizer, to advantage. 
Keep them clean. In cold weather, when 
windows must be kept tightly closed most 
of the time, and the air inside gets very 
dry, conditions will be favorable for the 
appearance of insect enemies — aphis, the 
small green plant lice, mealy-bug, the cot¬ 
tony, buzzy looking stickers, red spider, 
size of a pin point and making the leaves 
turn yellow and drop; these and others 
must be guarded against. Don’t let them 
get a start! Formulas and other methods 
of fighting will be given in detail in next 
month's department. 
Give all the air you can. Nothing is 
more important to healthy plant growth 
than fresh air. They should have all it is 
possible to give without letting the tem¬ 
perature get too low — 60-70 in the daytime 
is right for most house plants. Never, how¬ 
ever, let cold air blow directly onto the 
plants. Ventilate through a hall, an ad¬ 
joining room, or window on the opposite 
side of the room, with a screen in front of 
it. Once in a while, on a bright day, give 
the plants a good syringing and let them 
dry off in the sunlight. 
Study your plants: find out their indi¬ 
vidual needs. Get all the information you 
can about them. 
A Use for Dust 
D RY dust is a valuable absorbent. 
Gather it off the surface of the road 
or walks after a long dry spell and store it 
in boxes for future use. It is good in the 
hen house if spread over parts of the hen- 
ery or barn daily. Wherever there are 
foul gases and a disinfectant is needed this 
dry dust is useful. Mixed with ground to¬ 
bacco stems and leaves and dry manure it 
makes an excellent fertilizer and is worth 
a good deal in developing plants in a hurry. 
J. J. O’C. 
Mulching Ivy 
T HE success of gardening depends en¬ 
tirely upon prepartory measures. 
Along this line first of all comes mulching 
—the most important of all the garden 
work. Try it and see how true this is. 
A slip of ivy taken from the walls of 
Kenilworth Castle and brought to this 
country just hugged the ground year after 
year, never attempting to climb until a 
mulch of fine stable-manure was applied to 
it, in the fall of the year. When attention 
was called to it, the answer would be, 
“Kenilworth ivy is of very slow growth.” 
After the mulch was applied, covering it 
pretty well, it began putting up its tendrils 
all along the wall. Its new growth, a light 
:willow-green, looking so thrifty and beau¬ 
tiful. It now makes a fine display, almost 
covering a window and showing leaves 
that are three times the size of those before 
applying the mulch — and many times more 
beautiful. Its feeble growth, as well as the 
coloring and the size of the leaves, was 
helped by the mulch. C. B. H. 
Planning Garden Work 
T HE successful gardener is the man 
who has his garden in mind all the 
year. In the spring, its preparation and 
planting; in summer and autumn, cultiva¬ 
tion and harvest and the preservation of its 
products, and in the winter, reflection upon 
causes and results, and careful planning. 
To leave the choice of seeds, fertilizers, 
tools, etc., until the first warm days of 
Peas, beans, potatoes, beets, carrots, and 
corn require from one-fifth to one-fourth 
of the weight of the entire mixture of 
fertilizer to be some form of potash. Fruits 
and berries require about one-third. 
Spreading the garden with compost in¬ 
creases the efficiency of the prepared fer¬ 
tilizers. 
The mixing of fertilizers may be done 
some weeks previous to planting time if 
the mixtures are stored in a dry place. Be 
sure to label each mixture. 
For a garden plot of one-quarter of an 
acre set with small fruits, this mixture is 
very helpful: Thirty pounds of ground 
bone, forty-five pounds of muriate of pot¬ 
ash. fifty-five pounds of acid phosphate. 
For the same area planted with garden 
vegetables, twenty-five pounds each of ni- 
The attractive garden is not the product of a single spring planting, but depends just as 
much on careful winter planning and arranging to produce results such as these 
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spring is to be governed by the vague 
memories of last season’s work and by the 
plausible arguments of seedsmen and 
agents. To previously form logical plans 
is to vitalize one's garden work and to 
progress. Such gardening is a good in¬ 
vestment with sure returns at the end of 
the season. 
Under ordinary conditions, with the 
usual garden list, the first question is that 
of fertilizers. Ready prepared fertilizers 
for the garden can be obtained from local 
dealers almost anywhere, but one can work 
far more intelligently by buying the sepa¬ 
rate ingredients, mixing them according 
to the needs of the garden under consid¬ 
eration. Fruit, the rapid-growing vege¬ 
tables, and those which require several 
months to mature, can all be made econo¬ 
mically fertilized by special mixtures. 
trate of soda, sulphate of ammonia and 
ground bone; forty pounds each of dried 
blood and muriate of potash and one hun¬ 
dred and fifteen pounds of acid phosphate 
is an efifectual fertilizer where compost 
has been spread. On poor soil double the 
quantity. 
The necessary garden tools should be 
procured early enough to permit one to 
become familiar with the parts and their 
adjustment and garden seeds should be 
ordered while supplies are plentiful thus 
avoiding the danger of substitution on the 
part of the seedsmen. Enough seed should 
be purchased to provide for a succession 
of radishes, beets, peas, lettuce and other 
vegetables. 
Plan to have the preparatory plowing 
and harrowing done the last week in 
March, so that planting may be early. 
