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CONDUCTED BY GRACE TABOR 
Author of The Landscape Gardening Book, The Garden 
Primer, Old-Fashioned Gardening, etc. 
The^Frost Danger 
A GOOD thermometer hanging outdoors 
somewhere, in a position that is pro¬ 
tected from storm but not sheltered from 
temperature changes, is one of the most 
important things around the place these 
days, if you have any plants worth nursing 
along to the very last minute — and beyond 
— of the garden season. And every gar¬ 
den is sure to have some such. If no at¬ 
tempt has been made hitherto to protect 
them and prolong the life of the garden, 
try it this year. Frosts come at night when 
there are still many warm, lovely days 
ahead, and it is a pity to submit to their 
ravages, unresisting, when a very little 
trouble will ward them off. 
A great deal of work has been done by 
the Agricultural Department and the 
Weather Bureau, to say nothing of the 
Experiment Stations in various States, to 
the end that frost may be accurately fore¬ 
seen and guarded against; for it is, of 
course, a tragic menace in some of the 
great fruit-growing regions. From the 
exhaustive data thus gathered and com¬ 
pared, a very simple rule governing “frost 
procedure” in the small garden may be 
formulated. Here it is: Expect frost 
when the temperature drops to ten or eight 
degrees above freezing within an hour 
after sunset on a clear night — and get pro¬ 
tections in place. High ground will escape 
a visitation when lower ground suffers 
considerably; so will areas protected on 
the west and northwest by a sheet of water 
over which the winds from these quarters 
must first pass. Damp ground, however, 
whether high or low, will suffer when dry 
ground does not. 
Low plants are sufficiently protected by 
slight coverings of straw, or by newspa¬ 
pers or cheesecloth sheets laid over them 
and held in place by stones. There is no 
wind on a frost night, so it needs only a 
slight weight to retain them. Tall plants 
we all too seldom think it worth while to 
cover or guard; but dahlias and cosmos 
might be carried along — who shall say how 
late?—by the use of cheesecloth canopies 
such as are used in France and Italy to 
protect the vineyards and tender orchards. 
These are strung from poles set at the 
margins of plantations to be protected, and 
are slid back during the day and stretched 
across at night. The arrangement is sim¬ 
ple and, if neatly done, not at all disfigur¬ 
ing, for the canopies are so light that they 
do not require a heavy frame for their 
support. Sturdy saplings, set three feet 
into the ground and about twelve feet 
apart, and' strung at the proper height with 
a wire to which the cheesecloth is attached 
by small rings, are sufficient. Vines on 
these make them not unattractive pillars of 
green during all the season, and, of course, 
the cloth is not put up until frost time 
approaches. 
The Right Kind of Mulch 
A S fast as flower tops die, cut them 
down to within two inches of the 
ground, and spread a mulch two to four 
inches deep over the beds and borders. Do 
not use manure for this, however. The 
great plague of lawn and bed and border 
alike — weeds — is traceable directly to the 
use of manure ; and weed seeds retain their 
vitality for great periods—I am tempted 
to say forever, but perhaps that is an ex¬ 
aggeration. The fact that manure is old 
To get best results, divide perennial phlox 
roots every second year 
and well rotted has no restraining in¬ 
fluence or effect on them; and there is no 
doubt that the only way in which it can be 
applied to the soil with any degree of 
safety as far as weeds are concerned, is by 
burying it deep enough to thwart their am¬ 
bitions. If you cannot use it this way, do 
not use it at all. 
Clean rakings from the lawn of leaves 
and grass, vegetable tops — chopped or cut 
up if you have the facilities — and fine lit¬ 
ter from the poultry house — all these 
things saved in a compost heap from year 
to year and sprinkled with lime occasion¬ 
ally, take the place of manure perfectly. 
If you have nothing of this sort on hand, 
get clean straw instead of manure, and 
mulch with this, supplementing it as it 
breaks up in the spring and is worked into 
the ground, with bone meal and phosphate. 
The Indoor Plants 
M AKE cuttings now of all the things 
which you may wish to have in¬ 
doors during the winter—heliotrope, gera¬ 
niums, pinks and whatever there may be 
in the garden that will brighten indoors. 
Cuttings are simply little “slips,” set into 
clean sand and loam, and kept moist and 
in an equable temperature until they root. 
Plant bulbs in pots now, for Christmas 
flowers; and plant bulbs, as many of them 
as you can find room for, out-of-doors, 
everywhere. 
Lilies and Autumn Care of 
Perennials 
L ILIES should be planted in the fall, as 
the bulbs are liable to dry out and 
shrivel and lose vitality if left over until 
spring. Iris also should be set out now 
or they may not get started in time to 
bloom next summer. And practically all 
the perennials of an established garden 
need looking over every year to see 
whether they are crowding and need divid¬ 
ing. They spread continually around the 
parent crown, and after a time there comes 
to be such a knot of big hard roots, grip¬ 
ping each other and writhing about, that 
the entire plant is choked. 
Lift the plant — dig it up, in other words 
— carefully so these will not be broken; 
and divide it into several plants by cutting 
the roots apart with a sharp knife or pru¬ 
ning shears that will make a clean cut. 
See that each root clump has at its upper 
side the promise of a shoot — that is, a 
“crown”—if you want to get the best and 
quickest results; and trim off all broken or 
bruised roots before replanting. 
Perennial phlox should be divided about 
every second year—certainly every third 
— and most other garden flowers the same. 
Peonies, however, like to be undisturbed, 
provided they are well fed. 
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