50 
HO USE & GARDEN 
YOUR ALL-YEAR GARDEN 
October Work and Winter Plans 
F. F . ROCKWELL 
man or woman attempting to do most of the 
work about the home, October should be as event¬ 
ful and as fruitful a month for decorative plant¬ 
ing as April is in the vegetable garden or May 
in the flower beds. The plantings of shrubs, 
hardy perennials and hardy bulbs which can be 
made now offer unlimited opportunities. Wind¬ 
breaks, hedges, trees and flowering shrub borders 
are some of the things which are suitable for fall 
planting; formal beds, informal borders, “natu¬ 
ralizing,” in suitable situations, may be planted 
with bulbs. Hardy borders and boundary line 
plantings of all sorts may be made with hardy 
perennials. But if you intend planting with any 
of these things this fall you should send in your 
orders at once for what you may require. The 
planting of most of these things may be done at 
any time up to freezing weather, but under most 
conditions the sooner it is done after the first 
hard frost, the better will be the results. 
Get Ready for the Winter Garden 
Are you going to be without flowers to look 
at and to take care of during all the long and 
empty months from now until next May? Or 
are you going to get busy at once to make 
the man of the house do something now about 
providing you with a conservatory or a small 
attached greenhouse for this winter's use? 
The small, sectional “ready-to-put-up” little 
greenhouses now being made by several manu¬ 
facturers are practical and reasonable in price, 
but if you have not time for one of these, 
have at least one room that is full of light 
and sunshine to devote to your plants. If 
you will look into the matter, you will prob¬ 
ably find that either there is a room available 
which could easily be “built out” to make a 
neat, practical conservatory, or that you could 
have a small “lean-to” house built against the 
outside of such a room, with a door connect¬ 
ing with it, at a very reasonable figure. In 
addition to the pleasure and the usefulness to 
be derived from such a plant room, it will 
double the efficiency of such cold-frames as 
you may have already. Winter blooming bulbs 
of all such sorts and many plants for forcing 
can be started in the frames and brought in¬ 
doors when you want them, and plants may 
be started indoors to be set into the frames 
when half grown, particularly if they grow 
fast. The thing works advantageously "both 
ways, and the heating of such a conservatory 
or greenhouse is practically a by-product of 
your residence heating and will cost little. 
Is Your Mulching Material Ready Yet? 
You will want mulching material for several 
purposes this fall—your hardy borders, your 
new bulb beds, the strawberry bed, newly 
planted shrubs, the rose garden —all these 
things, in latitudes where the winters are 
severe, will need mulching of one sort or 
another. While the mulching in most cases 
should not he applied until after freezing- 
weather, it is best to get the various materials 
for this purpose as early as possible. For straw¬ 
berries and for general mulching where pro¬ 
tection only is the main thing sought, I know 
of nothing better than clean bog or marsh hay. 
You can probably obtain a load of this from some 
farmer in you vicinity at a very low cost. There 
is usually little danger of having too much of it 
and that which is not used for winter mulching 
may be saved for summer mulching. 
For the rose garden, in particular for the less ro¬ 
bust growing sorts, such as have “tea” blood in 
them, dry leaves are as good and as convenient as 
anything you may use. While you will not need 
to use them for some time yet, they should be 
gathered and stored as soon as ready. A handy 
way of handling them is to secure clean, strong 
burlap bags into which they can be stuffed tightly 
after they have been raked up. In this way they 
will take up much less room than if merely gath¬ 
ered and packed away in boxes and are handled 
with a good deal less trouble. 
For the newly planted bulb garden, the hardy 
border, especially if it has not been renewed for 
some years, and other places where it is desirable 
(Continued on page 54) 
I N spite of the sear-and-yellow leaf atmosphere 
which poets have ascribed to it, October is 
the month most full of pleasure in the whole 
circle of the gardener’s calendar. That is, if the 
gardener, through long summer days, has taken 
good care of the many little living things which 
he or she may have borrowed from Nature in 
the spring, with the promise to cherish them in 
sickness and in health, and to make them bear 
ten or twenty or a hundred fold in beauty or 
utility. It is a month of fulfillment. 
But a generous return for his season’s work 
is not all October offers the industrious gar¬ 
dener. She also presents him with a golden 
opportunity for stealing a march on the coming- 
season by working ahead of time. 
A Revolution Over Night 
If your place is a new one, or as yet not de¬ 
veloped so far as decorative plantings are con¬ 
cerned, you can within this one month make 
plantings which will absolutely alter or change its 
whole appearance for next year, from the first 
flush of April’s green foliage in spring to the 
gorgeous coloring of late October. For the busy 
Photographs by Dr. E. Bade 
In repotting house plants before their winter sojourn indoors , hold the plant (1) so it will not tumble out ivhen the 
pot is inverted (2). A few taps on a table free the roots and soil so they will come out intact (3), after tohich the old 
soil may be gently loosened (4). Put in fresh soil (5) and set the roots carefully (6), finally firming in with the fingers (7) 
