52 
House 
& Garden 
THE OCTOBER RECKONING 
October is the Ideal Month In Which to End the Fiscal 
Year of the Garden 
And to Count the Profit and Losses 
T HE other day a young woman, a beginner in business, was 
bewailing to a man old in the game the fact that half her 
business plans had gone awry. “Half! Count yourself 
lucky,” came the answer. “If fifty per cent of your business ven¬ 
tures are consistently successful, you have no need to worry; in 
fact, you ought to congratulate yourself.” 
There is a direct analogy in this for gardeners, and October is 
the month in which to see if you have been fifty per cent successful. 
The average gardener starts in the spring with an orgy of seeds. 
He’s not been able to resist the lure of the catalogs. Hardened to 
them as he is, he still has a notion that he can grow asters the size 
of hothouse chrysanthemums and potatoes as big as footballs. 
He orders the seeds, plants them with care, germinates them suc¬ 
cessfully—and then his gardening work becomes so arduous and 
diverse that he hasn’t time to compare the results with what he 
dreamed. 
It is by the standard of the matured flower, fruit or vegetable 
that we reckon success, partial success or failure. If we have been 
fifty per cent successful, we ought to be satisfied. If we had a 
good stand of sweet peas, husky dahlias, enormous pumpkins and 
persistent luck with bush beans, then that should be enough for 
one year. The salpiglossis may have been only half-successful, the 
corn rather poor, the verbena a total loss and the snapdragons a 
disgrace. Against these we place our successes—and are satisfied. 
O CTOBER offers the best garden perspective of any month in 
the year. The garden is then fresh in the mind. Successes 
and failures are fresh. You have tried to raise sweet peas 
for three years now, have given them every advantage—and found 
them a loss. Now is the time to realize that sweet peas are out of 
your realm. Make up your mind now to resist even the most tempt¬ 
ing of next spring’s sweet pea catalogs. Or you may have tried 
your hand this year for the first time with such a common perennial 
as phlox and lived to see it annoyed and despoiled by red spider 
and mildew. It is evident that you neglected to spray at the right 
time. This should be ticked off in your mind or in your garden 
records, and next year there need be no excuse for only partial 
success. Or it may be that last year you were successful with corn 
and failed this season. The elements may have been against you. 
What you lost on corn you must make up on the wonderful tomatoes 
you had this year. 
Taking them as a whole, most gardens that have received any 
care are fifty per cent successful. There is rarely a total loss. We 
should accept this percentage as ample. 
A NOTHER thing to reckon up in October are your likes and 
your dislikes. 
The average gardener each year tries something new. His 
eye falls on an unfamiliar item in the catalogs, and he is curious 
to grow that flower. It may prove quite an addition to his garden, 
or it may be mediocre. The so-called “novelty” often falls under 
this head. If it hasn’t given satisfaction, throw it out without 
a qualm. 
October is an ideal month for discarding undesirable plants. At 
this season of the year one always makes some changes in the 
borders. The iris has to be thinned out, or new phlox is planted 
or that aconite moved from a sunny spot where it did poorly to a 
shady place where it ought to thrive. While doing this, discard 
those plants that you feel you have really outgrown. All garden¬ 
ing is progressive. Your tastes and standards are stiffened from 
year to year. Like the collector of pictures, who discards his 
amateurish examples of bad taste, you should have no hesitation 
in getting rid of some of your early mistakes. Under this head 
come some varieties of phlox, a few of the viburnums and certainly 
those garden thieves—golden glow and wild cucumber. 
W HILE it may be easier just to remember successes and fail¬ 
ures, it is wiser to set them dow'n in a book. 
Some time in October, when the frost has cleared off the 
annuals, and the dahlias and gladioli have been exhumed for their 
winter rest, it is our custom to cast up the book of the garden. 
For us October begins and ends the fiscal year. One season’s work 
is passed, and plans are being formulated for next spring. Then 
we take the little black-bound ledger that we bought for the pur¬ 
pose in a shop back of the Madelaine in Paris, and in which the 
garden notes are written Sunday by Sunday. In this we set down 
the profits and the losses. My Swede, who looks like Ben Turpin 
of the movies, sits in solemnly at this directors’ meeting. The con¬ 
versation goes something like this: “What about the potatoes, Mr. 
Lindeberg?” “By golly,” he answers, “he ban too much rain.” 
So “too much rain” goes alongside the potatoes. Beside the salpi¬ 
glossis this year I have to write “damped off,” because out of two 
plantings of seed brought only half a dozen plants through the 
seedling stage. Against the helichrysum we’ll simply have to set 
what the insurance policies piously call “an act of God,” because 
I call on things above and things below to witness that thrice I 
planted those especially chosen and high-priced seed in especiallv 
prepared soil, and from my labors brought one lone, solitary plant 
into being. And it bore—just my luck!—a shade of red that I 
dislike. 
Looking over that book today, I find many failures but not a 
little good fortune. It averages to a desirable fifty per cent of 
success. And even at that there is no record of how much better 
we feel now, after a summer of gardening, or of those rapturous 
moments when first the peony buds unfolded and the calendulas 
dabbled the borders with sunlight. That’s the only trouble with 
keeping a garden record and making an October survey—you can't 
set down good health and the delight of the eye! 
