Garden Suggestions 
CONDUCTED BY F. F. ROCKWELL 
Author of Home Vegetable Gardening and Gardening 
Indoors and Under Glass 
Care of the Vegetable Garden 
W HEN the planting of the late crops 
is finished, and the last blank spaces 
left in your planting plan have been filled 
in, it is very natural to rest on your oars 
for a while in the happy thought that you 
have got things nicely cleaned up and are 
entitled to a rest. Entitled to it you may 
be. but if you stop to take it you will find 
that it has to be settled for later, in one of 
two ways: either your garden will suffer 
from neglect, or you will suffer in trying 
to make up for lost time. For there is this 
great difference between the care of the 
garden and the planting of the garden: 
you may put off a job of the latter sort 
for a few days, or a week, or even two, 
after it should be done, 
and you will find precise¬ 
ly the same task awaiting 
you when you finally do 
get around to it. But if 
you put off weeding, or 
hoeing, or pruning and 
staking up tomato plants, 
you will find that this job 
does not wait for you, but 
gets bigger and bigger 
every day it is allowed to 
remain undone. 
Succession Plantings 
T HE succession plant¬ 
ings should of 
course, however, not be 
overlooked, for they make 
a very big part of the dif¬ 
ference between good 
gardening and poor gar¬ 
dening — it is a very nat¬ 
ural thing to go into 
things heavily on the first 
planting or two, be flood¬ 
ed with vegetables for a 
few weeks when they 
come into bearing, and 
then, as far as those particular things are 
concerned, have a famine for the rest of 
the season. Beets, carrots, lettuce, peas, 
radishes, and turnips, of the early-planted 
crops, should all be followed up with later 
plantings, and beans and corn, especially 
the former, should be put in in several 
varieties and plantings to secure a succes¬ 
sion until frost. In this way you will in¬ 
crease the efficiency of the garden from a 
practical point of view, and spread the 
bearing time of the different kinds of 
vegetables over as long a period as pos¬ 
sible. 
Clean Picking Important 
A NOTHER way of making sure of 
having the various garden crops 
throughout the season is to see to it that 
no fruits, or seeds, which are not needed 
for the table are left to ripen on the vines. 
As far as Nature is concerned the purpose 
of the plant is to reproduce seeds, and 
when it has done this its natural course is 
to die, whether you would like a few more 
dishes of tender vegetables for the table 
or not. On the other hand, strangely 
enough, if you prevent its doing this, it 
will continue to produce in the attempt to 
ripen seeds. Keep your plants and vines 
clean, both of unused product and of in¬ 
jured or decayed portions which may exist. 
their getting hard; beans before the indi¬ 
vidual seeds begin to attain full size; kohl¬ 
rabi while still two or three inches in diam¬ 
eter ; lettuce before the center of the head 
‘run up,” etc. 
Entirely apart from the improved appearance of the garden, neatness and care in 
keeping down the weeds have a positive, tangible value 
Use Your Vegetables While Tender 
A NOTHER mistake which many gar¬ 
deners make is in letting their veg¬ 
etables get too far developed or too ripe 
before using them. One of the advan¬ 
tages of a home garden is that the various 
things may be used when at their very 
best. Radishes should be used when very 
small. They develop so rapidly that they 
are in their prime only for a few days — 
not over a week or so — from each plant¬ 
ing. Peas should be taken as soon as they 
fill out and before there is anv sign of 
Watch for the Enemy 
nPHIS is usually about the time when 
the most serious of the garden's in¬ 
sect enemies open up their warfare in 
earnest. The potato bug, the rose bug, 
the currant-worm, and for late tender 
plants that have just been set out, the cut¬ 
worm, will be the most likely to do dam¬ 
age, if you are not watching for them. 
Arsenate of lead is the best thing to use 
for potato bugs. If you haven't got that, 
use Paris green, but you 
will have to go over the 
plants oftener with the 
latter, and there is more 
danger of injuring the 
foliage. For the currant- 
worms use either Paris 
green or arsenate of lead 
for the first brood, and if 
there is another one later 
after the fruit is formed, 
use white hellebore, which 
will be washed off by the 
rain before the fruit is 
ready to gather. For the 
cut-worms use a poison 
bait composed of bran and 
a little molasses to sweet¬ 
en it, and white arsenic, 
arsenate of lead or Paris 
green mixed with it. They 
work at night so that it is 
best to apply the bait late 
in the afternoon that there 
may be no chance of its 
getting dried up and 
dusty, as the fresher it is 
the more readily it will be 
discovered bv the worms. 
For more particulars as 
to remedies for other insect enemies as 
well as fungus diseases, see the article in 
the preceding number of this magazine on 
Spraying. 
A number of our garden friends who 
are really beneficial are usually either 
killed or hunted out, such for instance as 
the striped garter-snake, the small green 
or “grass” snake, and toads and frogs. 
Toads especially are beneficial and their 
residence in the garden should be encour¬ 
aged. There is, as far as my experience 
goes, no truth whatever in the “wart” 
mvth. 
(489) 
