CARDEN 
SUGGESTIONS 
ape/ 
QUERIES 
CONDUCTED BY F. F. ROCKWELL 
P UT a red mark around March i on 
your calendar to remind you that 
you have but a month — four short weeks 
— left in which to get everything ready for 
the “spring opening” of April. When the 
snow drives and a northwest wind makes 
you turn up your coat collar and hasten 
to the shelter of the house, it may seem 
that spring is a long way off; but this is 
only winter’s final presumptuous bluff, 
and maybe by afternoon, out on the sunny 
side of the barn the warm sunshine will 
trickle down the back of your neck until 
your coat peels off. 
There may be some things left that must 
be done before the sap starts. Look up 
the suggestions given in these pages last 
month. If you have not already attended 
to this work on your own place, do it now ! 
This will be the last chance. 
Set Out Small Fruits this Spring 
Unless your place is thoroughly well 
stocked with the various small fruits, plan 
now for what you will want to set out this 
spring. These will take up comparatively 
little room, and none of the garden’s 
products are looked forward to and en¬ 
joyed more than June’s strawberries and 
summer's blackcaps and raspberries and 
fall’s sugary grapes. Moreover, any sur¬ 
plus of any of the small fruits need never 
be wasted. Whoever heard of too much 
raspberry jam or too many currant dump¬ 
lings in winter? Corners, wall, house- 
sides, etc., may be taken advantage of for 
growing the small fruits if your garden 
space is limited. Go over your garden 
carefully and mark down on the garden 
plan you made last January just how 
much space you will want to devote to 
small fruits. Then indicate on the sketch 
the number of each of the various fruits — 
A strong-growing Manetti stock, cut ready for grafting 
raspberries, blackberries, dewberries, cur¬ 
rants, grapes, strawberries and dwarf 
fruits, apples, pears, etc., you plan to set 
out. If you find you cannot get them all 
this year, plan for them just the same. 
Then get what you can. maybe one or two 
or a half-dozen, as the case may be, of a 
kind, and leave room to put in the rest 
next year or the year after. Five dollars 
or ten dollars a year judiciously laid out 
for two or three consecutive years will re¬ 
sult in a fruit garden capable of supplying 
the average family with a generous supply. 
Do not allow yourself to be tempted into 
buying altogether wonderful new varie¬ 
ties of the small fruits. Good new kinds 
there are. But it is always safest to se¬ 
lect only, or mostly, kinds which receive 
the recommendation of more than one 
seedsman, and which have been out at least 
two or three years. The best varieties of 
the new fall-fruiting strawberries are 
practical and very good, but you will 
probably be disappointed in the yield un¬ 
less you take the precaution of removing 
the first crop of blossoms, which isn’t such 
a big task on a few dozen or hundred 
plants. The new St. Regis “Ever-bear¬ 
ing” raspberry differs distinctly from the 
older sorts and ripens fruit in the fall on 
the new canes. Ranere is a sort very 
similar to. if not identical with, St. Regis. 
Among the newer strawberries, Early 
Ozark and Fendall are very fine early and 
late sorts, respectively. Among the grapes, 
beside the well-known standard sorts, such 
as Concord and Delaware, Lindley, an ex- 
Too much old wood here; it should be cut back 
tra large, sweet, red, and Pocklington, a 
delicious, juicy golden, will undoubtedly 
claim a place for themselves as they be¬ 
come better known. All the small fruits 
will do well in average garden soil, pro¬ 
vided there is good drainage. As a rule, 
it will pay best to order first sized plants 
of the small fruits, as the difference in 
price does not amount to a great deal, and 
results are quicker. 
Work in the Greenhouse 
This month and next there are plenty of 
activities in the greenhouse to occupy fully 
all the indoor time enforced by inclement 
weather. If any Easter Lilies are being 
forced they should receive special atten¬ 
tion from now on, being forced ahead 
with higher temperature and liquid ma¬ 
nuring or held back if they seem too far 
ahead. The latter is seldom the case, 
however, and it is much better to have 
them a little too far advanced than lagging 
behind. If you have no roses growing in 
the greenhouse, get a few plants, dor¬ 
mant, from your seedsman, or out of the 
garden, if there are a few that you can 
spare, and give them a rich soil and a 
warm corner, with plenty of water after 
active growth begins. Plants of all kinds 
which flowered through the winter, and 
which have been resting for the past 
month or two, and plants which remain 
nearly dormant through the winter, such 
as palms, should be started into more 
active growth now. Re-pot where neces- 
sarv, using for most things pots one or 
two sizes larger than those in which they 
have been growing. Some plants, such as 
palms and other fine-fibrous things, do 
better with a comparatively restricted root 
room. Azaleas should be started into 
Tying the graft rose in place on sturdy root stock 
