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is slack, you can get it at a lower price. Unless you are fortunate 
enough to be near an abundant supply of manure, you will 
probably have to use five or six hundred pounds of commercial 
fertilizer. If you want to get the best possible fertilizer for the 
least possible money, you will haye to buy the raw materials and 
mix your own. It will not be a disagreeable job and will require 
only a few minutes’ work with square pointed shovel and a 
smooth, tight floor. The ingredients which I have used for a 
number of years with complete success are high grade tank¬ 
age, sixteen per cent acid phosphate, muriate of potash, and 
nitrate of soda. If you will use them in the proportions of 
50, 60, 40, and 
30 pounds, in 
the order men¬ 
tioned above, 
they will give 
you a complete 
fertilizer of ap¬ 
proximately four 
per cent nitrogen, 
eight of avail¬ 
able phosphoric 
acid, and ten of 
potash. The ad¬ 
vantages of mix¬ 
ing your own 
fertilizer are a 
saving of forty 
to fifty cents on 
each one h u n- 
dred pounds and 
the fact that you 
get better stuff than you can buy. If you think you cannot mix 
your own, however, be sure to send to your State agricultural 
college and get a copy of its report on fertilizers, which is abso¬ 
lutely free, and a brief inspection 
of which will show you in which 
of the ready mixed brands you 
can get the most for your money. 
Get twenty-five to fifty pounds 
extra each, according to the size 
of your garden, of nitrate of 
soda, muriate of potash, and 
tankage. The former is invalu¬ 
able as a top dressing to give 
some things a quick start, espe¬ 
cially in the spring. The potash 
is useful as a top dressing, also, 
for crops that do not seem to be 
ripening up when they should, 
and is especially valuable for use 
in connection with fruit trees, 
vines, etc. Tankage makes an ex¬ 
cellent starter to use in the hill 
with plants that are set out or under muskmelons and the like. 
Your garden tools should be kept just as sharp and bright as 
a pocket knife and always in good running order. Any bolts and 
attachments that have become so rusty as to stick should be 
soaked and thoroughly cleaned and oiled so that they will give 
you no trouble in the spring. Get a flat file and go over the edges 
of your hand and wheel hoes. If a new trowel, hoe, rake, or 
watering-pot will be needed in the spring, order it with your 
seeds. You will have a larger variety to select from than in the 
small local hardware store and can obtain one better suited to 
your particular requirements. Have you a full set of attach¬ 
ments to go with your wheel hoe? If not, add one or two to your 
list each year until you have the complete practical outfit. 
The experiment stations have had a long and uphill publicity 
campaign to get people to realize the amount of injury done by 
the various insects which attack growing crops, and to realize 
the fact that the most of them can now be controlled if they are 
taken in time. But timeliness is the great secret of success in 
the warfare against these things. Practically all the remedies and 
preventatives required, certainly all those you need for an 
ordinary garden, are now to be had in low-priced, ready-to-use 
forms, which will keep perfectly well. Why not get a pound or 
a pint of each and have them on hand ready to use? Get a 
stout, medium¬ 
sized drygoods 
box and nail it 
up securely to 
the side of your 
tool house; 
fasten the cover 
on with a couple 
of hinges and a 
clasp so it can 
be locked up per¬ 
fectly safe from 
the children ; a 
piece of thin 
board such as 
the side of a 
cracker box will 
make a neat 
shelf easily fitted 
into it. Then get 
the following: 
One pound of Paris green, twenty-five cents; one pound of 
arsenate of lead, twenty cents; one pound of hellebore, twentv- 
five cents; one quart of liquid Bordeaux mixture, twenty-five 
cents; one quart of kerosene 
emulsion, prepared, twenty-five 
cents; total, one dollar and twenty 
cents. Besides these, especially if 
you have any fruit trees, small 
fruits, or plants in the flower gar¬ 
den which are subject to attack 
from mildew, smuts, or rust, get 
a gallon of lime sulphur wash at 
seventy-five cents. For a couple 
of dollars so invested you can 
buy garden insurance against a 
high percentage of the insects 
and diseases which are likely to 
give you trouble. Your sprayer 
and powder gun, if you take good 
care of them, should last ten or 
fifteen years, and the supply of 
poisons and sprays in the above 
list will do for the ordinary home garden for two or three sea¬ 
sons. There is not space here to tell you why and how these 
different things should be used, but you do not need to know that 
now; the point is to have them on hand and ready—for with 
most of them come full directions. But the most important thing 
about using any of them is to get it under the leaves, vines, bark, 
or whatever the case may be, within a short time after you per¬ 
ceive the first sign of danger. 
What did you do when the dry weather struck you this sum¬ 
mer? What happened to your garden when week after week 
went by without rain? Was your soil so retentive of moisture 
(Continued on page 406) 
If you can arrange to do so, it will usually prove less expensive to get the necessary manure for fertilizing during the 
winter instead of the spring. At the latter time the available supply will be more in demand 
In preparing the soil for indoor plants care should be taken to pulverize 
the ingredients before mixing them 
(36o) 
