GARDEN 
SUGGESTIONS 
AT A 
QJJERJES 
CONDUCTED BY F. F. ROCKWELL 
IS 
Have You Overlooked Up-to-Date 
Irrigation ? 
HE modern systems of applying 
water which have been developed 
during the last few years have been men¬ 
tioned from time to time in House and 
Garden. But methods which are a radi¬ 
cal departure from those that have pre¬ 
ceded, no matter how good, are always 
slow to be accepted. If you have a vege¬ 
table or a flower garden which usually suf¬ 
fers from dry weather during July, August 
or September — and there are very few 
which do not — lose no time in investigat¬ 
ing the several overhead systems of water¬ 
ing. Usually, to see one is to have one. 
Before deciding that you will not profit 
this year from this great advance in 
watering, consider the followdng facts: 
any of these systems is just as practicable 
for a garden a few rods square as for that 
of several acres. The most expensive part 
of the outfit is j^-inch galvanized pipe. 
This costs from five to eight cents a foot. 
Hose cost from fifteen to twenty. If noz¬ 
zles are used — they are pla'ced every three 
or four feet — they cost five to seven cents 
apiece. Sprinklers cost from two to six 
dollars apiece, and each one covers a cir¬ 
cle of from forty to a hundred feet in 
diameter. You will not have to waste any 
of your precious gardening time in holding 
the hose, rolling and unrolling it, and in 
moving it about. Furthermore, plants 
that are kept growing vigorously with an 
abundance of water are much more capa¬ 
ble of withstanding and resisting the at¬ 
tacks of insects and disease. On the whole, 
there is no garden investment that you 
can make which will give you as much 
satisfaction as a modern watering outfit. 
It will do more to make big vegetables 
and perfect flowers certain than any fine 
varieties, high-priced fertilizer or up-to- 
date cultural methods that you have ever 
used. 
Pot Plants in Summer 
The various house plants are somewhat 
of a problem and a good deal of a care 
during the summer months. They are 
usually kept on the veranda, or a wire 
plant stand, where, in spite of constant 
attention, they frequently dry out, so that 
the plants are more or less injured. The 
most convenient way of caring for such 
plants during the summer is to spade up 
a bed for them in some corner or under a 
tree where they will get partial shade. 
The pots should be half plunged or buried 
in the soil, and turned or taken up occa¬ 
sionally to prevent their rooting into the 
dirt below. They will have to be watered 
only half as frequently as when the pots 
are fully exposed to the sun and air. 
Those designed for winter bloom indoors 
should not be allowed to flower much dur¬ 
ing the summer. They should be cut or 
pinched back occasionally to be got into 
ideal shape. 
Plants for House and Greenhouse 
in the Winter 
It is time now to start plants, either 
from seeds or cuttings, that will be wanted 
in fall or winter for use in the house or 
in the greenhouse. The best method to 
use for starting cuttings at this time of 
the year, when the temperature is apt to 
be high, is the “saucer system.” It is 
simplicity itself. An earthenware dish, 
several inches deep, is filled partly full of 
sand, which is saturated until the moisture 
stands on the surface. Place the cuttings 
in this in an upright position around the 
edge of the bowl, which is kept in full sun¬ 
light. Success depends upon keeping the 
sand properly saturated. In hot or windy 
weather, if the bowl is kept out-of-doors, 
evaporation will be very rapid and the 
sand should be looked at frequently. In 
preparing the cuttings care should be taken 
to get them just right, as in fall and spring 
propagation-—that is, they should be taken 
from new growth that has become firm 
enough, so that when bent between the 
fingers it will snap instead of merely 
doubling up. The lower leaves of each 
cutting should be cut off, and the larger 
ones shortened back a half or so. This 
makes the cutting less likely to wilt and 
makes it possible to get a great many 
more into the same-sized saucer. Another 
method of rooting the cuttings in the sum¬ 
mer is to break the shoot partly off from 
the plant, leaving it partly attached by a 
In the garden the pipes are hidden behind foliage which, however, does not inter¬ 
fere with the spread of the stream 
By running the pipe down the center of the garden both sides are reached, the 
mechanism being adjusted without labor 
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