Garden Suggestions 
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uenes 
The Vegetable Garden 
CONDUCTED BY F. F. ROCKWELL 
Author of Home Vegetable Gardening and Gardening i 
Indoors and Under Glass 
In the November Garden 
O you remember last spring and all 
the things you wanted to do, ex¬ 
pected to do and failed to do because there 
was not time for everything? Then do 
not sit by complacently when you have 
gotten vour crops safely harvested and 
your bulbs and other fall planting attended 
to. In the latter part of October and the 
first half of November there will he mel¬ 
low, sunshiny days which are ideal for 
working out of doors. While they are yet 
to be enjoyed make the most of them. 
You may have noticed that in these col¬ 
umns and elsewhere in this magazine I 
have had a good deal to say during the last 
six months about irrigation—the new 
method of overhead irrigation which is in¬ 
creasing the value of small gardens two 
or three hundred per cent, in seasons like 
this we have just gone through. If you 
have not yet put in irrigation, get busy 
while the lesson of this past season's 
drought is still fresh in your memory, and 
get an inch or an inch-and-a-quarter pipe 
laid to your garden this fall; then, with 
the water supply available, it will he the 
work of only a few hours to install your 
irrigation system next summer when the 
dry weather comes. If you put one in this 
past summer, be sure to get all the water 
out of all the pipes before freezing weather 
comes, as otherwise you will find yourself 
next spring with some scrap iron on your 
hands and new pipe to buy. 
Your material for mulching—meadow 
hay, strawy manure or dead leaves—is or 
should be on hand, convenient for use, hut 
do not be in a hurry to put it on ; wait until 
the ground is frozen solid. 
Be ready for the first real cold snap; 
almost every year some of us get caught 
with a bushel or so of some of the root 
crops, or fruit, which has been put under 
temporary cover under some shed or out- 
of-the-way place, and is overlooked until 
after it is touched by frost and spoiled. 
Get everything into the cellar or wherever 
you are going to keep it through the win¬ 
ter ; and then, by getting a pair of small 
hinges, which will cost you about ten cents, 
and securing these to the upper edge of 
the window which furnishes ventilation, 
you can easily arrange it so that you can 
supply as much or as little air as desired, 
keeping the temperature down, but under 
control, so that you can close things up at 
a moment’s notice some night when the 
thermometer begins to volplane towards 
the zero point. 
This is about the last call for getting 
your frames into shape, so that they will be 
all ready to use next spring, if you don’t 
intend to grow anything in them through 
the winter; but by all means you should 
have a few sash or double glass, so that 
you can have lettuce, radishes and so forth 
up until Christmas, or clear through until 
spring if you will take the trouble to make 
a good hot-bed late in the fall. 
Some Garden Uses for Concrete 
E VERY year we find more and more 
use for concrete for the making of 
short walks, stepping blocks, gutters, posts, 
troughs, a large sunken basin for the front 
lawn or garden (which the birds appre¬ 
ciate quite wonderfully), for hitching 
posts, solid benches in the greenhouse, 
coldframes and hotbeds, as well as for 
such larger structures as the root cellar, 
garage or other outbuildings. It is un¬ 
equaled and comparatively inexpensive if 
Where a deep bed is wanted for next spring, it may 
well be dug out now and new soil put in 
you can get the sand and gravel near by; 
possibly you have them on your own place 
for the trouble of digging and screening. 
All the materials you need are the cement 
and some clean, coarse sand, and gravel or 
clean, hard cinders. For work that should 
be extra strong use a 1-2-4 mixture; for 
walks, sewers, gutters or ordinary floors 
a 1-23G-5 mixture; and for thick walls, 
foundations and so forth a 1-3-6 mixture; 
the figures in each case represent the pro¬ 
portions of cement, sand, and gravel re- 
respectively. Mix the sand and cement 
together, dry thoroughly; then add the 
gravel, first wetting it, and mix all to¬ 
gether, adding water gradually until the 
whole is of a slushy consistency and thor¬ 
oughly mixed. Temporary forms made 
of boards or lumber are used to bold the 
mixture in position for from twenty-four 
to forty-eight hours, until it sets enough 
to be able to retain its shape without 
danger of falling. After it once sets it is 
impervious to frost, but while it is in a 
“ green” state it should not be exposed to 
a freezing temperature. 
For Next Year’s Garden 
NOTHER job which, while not 
strictly a vegetable garden one, is 
very necessary and should be attended to 
before freezing weather, is the preparation 
of the rose garden for planting next year. 
Spring is the best time for planting most 
roses in latitudes north of Philadelphia, 
but the beds will certainly be in much bet¬ 
ter shape if prepared now, to say nothing 
of the advantage of having the work done 
and out of the way of the spring rush. 
The greatest half of the secret of success 
in rose culture is in having the bed prop¬ 
erly made. Two things must be provided 
—absolutely thorough drainage, and a 
deep, rich, loam soil in which to plant. In 
many places good soil is to be found where 
the bed is made; a convenient way is to 
make the bed three to five feet wide and 
so situated that it can be reached from 
either side, which will help very much in 
cultivating and caring for the plants. Dig 
the bed out to a depth of two to three feet, 
being careful to keep all the good soil 
by itself and not mixing it with the sub¬ 
soil. Fill in from a fourth to a third of 
the excavation with small stones, cinders 
or broken brick or plaster for drainage 
material, over this put a layer of the grassy 
sod which has been taken out, to prevent 
the fine earth from washing down among 
the stones, and then fill to within six to 
eight inches of the top with good earth in¬ 
to which a liberal proportion of well rotted 
manure has been mixed. If manure is not 
to be bad use coarse bone meal. The top 
eight or ten inches of soil should be with¬ 
out manure, and the surface should 
be raised slightly to allow for settling. 
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