House & Garden 
Home Grown Melons of Quality Plus 
( Continued, from page 70) 
The Nation’s Need 1 
Bigger and Better Crops 
are assured by planting hedgerows and windbreaks to jj 
protect from winds and cold your vegetable garden and J 
field crops. Evergreen trees sheltering your buildings g 
will save fuel and keep your animals warmer, saving § 
feed. 1 
We Need Relaxation 
and happy occupation in these strenuous days. Plant g 
trees for pleasure. Enrich your joy in life by making m 
your home grounds more beautiful, harmonious and g 
restful. Only a small expenditure for trees is necessary. g 
Start a Little Tree Garden | 
Buy little trees now—plant them out for borders and 1 
edging for your vegetable garden, also in rows like g 
vegetables and flowers. Employ the Little Tree Garden 1 
idea and set the trees out without additional labor; they 
will require practically no care; they will add beauty 
and charm to your vegetable plot and flower garden; g 
and they will be increasing in size and value all the g 
time. It’s real economy and pleasure to do so. M 
easily injured. In some cases boards 
with blocks on either end are used to 
step on, thus preventing injury to the 
plants. 
Melons leave the vine when ripe, so 
it is a simple task to pick them. Most 
beginners make the mistake of pulling 
the melons before they are ripe. You 
cannot go wrong if you will wait until 
the fruit leaves the vine voluntarily. 
As to Varieties 
There is considerable difference in the 
size and the color of the flesh and skin 
of the varieties of melons. Some are 
smooth and others netted; but the im¬ 
portant thing is flavor. It is in this 
essential that we find the greatest dif¬ 
ferences. Emerald Gem is the peer of 
all melons when well grown, with its 
deep salmon flesh, dark green skin and 
wonderful flavor. Paul Rose and Bur- 
ruls Gem are also good salmon fleshed 
varieties. In green fleshed varieties a 
good strain of Rocky Ford is unques¬ 
tionably the best. Long Island Beauty 
or Hackensack may appeal to those who 
like a large melon. I think most people 
prefer melons that can be served in 
halves rather than slices, and the ten¬ 
dency is therefore to grow the smaller 
sorts which I have already mentioned. 
There is just as much importance in 
a strain of melons as there is in a strain 
of chickens or anything else of selective 
breeding. You can improve your melons 
wonderfully by selecting your own strain, 
after you have determined the variety 
that comes nearest to meeting your 
standards. Save the seed each year from 
the earliest, best formed and most high¬ 
ly flavored melon that ripens. By this 
process you will get better melons with 
a shorter growing season. I have carried 
the same strain for fourteen years with 
no deterioration in constitution and a 
big improvement in quality. The aver¬ 
age gain in maturity by selection was 
fifteen days in fourteen years. 
The three most important factors in 
the production of high grade melons, in 
the order of their importance, are: the 
texture and fertility of the soil the plants 
grow in; the quality of the strain; and 
the date of sowing. If melons are planted 
early enough so that they start to ma¬ 
ture before the middle of August when 
the nights get quite cool, your crop is 
assured. If they do not start to ripen 
before this the chances are they will be 
a disappointment; that is why frames 
are a necessity rather than a luxury. 
Building the Garden 
(Continued from page 31) 
With a Little Tree Garden on Your Place 
“It Is Always Planting Season 99 
With You ~ 
How many times while walking about your estate 
have you thought “A little blue spruce would ‘brighten 
up’ this corner” or “A few shade trees right here would 
be just the place to swing a hammock this hot day,” or 
“I wish that objectionable view on my neighbor’s prop¬ 
erty was screened from sight,” or “A mass planting of 
Japanese Barberry with its bright red berries would be 
cheerful in the fall and early winter,” etc. ? With a 
Little Tree Garden you can carry out these small plant¬ 
ings with your own stock when the spirit moves. 
Sample Bargain “Little Tree Garden” Combination 
35 Plants for $12.00 
This collection comprises seven of our most desirable species 
of sizes and quantities given below. All American-Born and 
American-Grown. 
5 Silver (Concolor) Fir . 1 to 1 J A feet tall 
5 Blue (Colorado) Spruce . 1 to IV 2 feet tall 
5 Douglas Spruce (Fir) . 1 to l l / 2 feet tall 
5 Red (Norway) Pine . 1 to l l / 2 feet tall 
5 Arborvitae (White Cedar) . 1 to ij4 feet tall 
5 Japanese Barberry . 1 to l x / 2 feet tall 
5 Sugar (Rock) Maple . 4 to 6 feet tall 
35 Plants for only $12.00. 
This high-quality stock has been twice-transplanted and root- 
pruned. Prices include packing and delivery to the transpor¬ 
tation company at Framingham, Mass. 
2 of these combinations— 70 plants—for $20.00 
10 of these combinations—350 plants—for 90.00 
Send for catalog today. Illustrated and instructive listing twenty 
million trees for ornament, shade and forest planting. 
Write for specific information. 
Give your conditions and object of planting. We will advise 
the proper planting materials and how to have complete success. 
TCittle QTree Jfarmg (J2car Boston) 
NURSERIES OF 
American Forestry Company 
Division K-2,15 Beacon St., Boston, Mass. 
miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiM 
of plants or “hill” is treated as an in¬ 
dividual unit. Familiar examples of 
vegetables grown by this system are 
melons, cucumbers, sweet corn and pole 
beans. 
I referred above to plants grown from 
seed, and later set out. For the very 
early garden and the very late garden 
there are many advantages in getting 
the plants partly grown before they go 
into the garden. By doing this we can 
make the vegetable season longer at both 
ends, and also be more certain of getting 
results. Plants to be set out may be 
grown either in drills, rows or hills, ac¬ 
cording to their general characteristics 
and requirements. But to give the best 
results, they should be handled in just 
the right way. 
Most of the vegetables that are put in 
in drills, the majority of which are root 
crops, do not require a great deal of 
space between the rows. Usually, there¬ 
fore, no particular preparation of the 
soil, in addition to that which I have al¬ 
ready described, is needed. If the soil 
is rather poor, on account of not having 
been properly manured and fertilized, 
however, it will pay to take the trouble 
to mark out each row, open up a small 
furrow, and distribute ground bone 
along the bottom—one small handful will 
do for 10' to 20' of row. Then cover 
this over and mark out a drill of suffici¬ 
ent depth for the seed which is to be 
planted. 
Rows are more often given some spe¬ 
cial preparation before planting the 
seed. Frequently the fertilizer is so ap¬ 
plied that it will be under the individual 
plants; that is, the furrows are marked 
out for the rows and then “cross 
marked” where the seeds are to be sown 
or the plants set, and the fertilizer ap¬ 
plied at these points. It is easier and, 
in most cases, very much better, to dis¬ 
tribute the fertilizer evenly for the whole 
length of the row rather than to make 
any attempt to get it under the indi¬ 
vidual plants. The amount to be ap¬ 
plied will vary, of course, with the gen¬ 
eral condition of the garden, the vege¬ 
table to be planted, and the quality of 
fertilizer to be used. Sometimes as 
much as a small handful for each plant 
is applied, but much more frequently 
this quantity will do for three or four 
plants. By far the best plan is to de¬ 
pend upon a thorough manuring and 
fertilizing of the garden before planting, 
to carry the crop through the season. 
The use of a small amount of some 
suitable fertilizer, rich in nitrogen, dis¬ 
tributed along the row or near where 
each plant is to be, is for the specific 
purpose of giving the plant a strong 
start and thus enabling it to develop a 
big root system and go foraging for the 
plant food in the soil as early as possible. 
Hills, which are usually several feet 
apart each way, are ordinarily fertilized 
or enriched as units. The proper method 
of preparation for such things as vine 
crops, pole beans, etc., is to dig out the 
soil for a space of 18" to 24" square, 
and several inches deep. With the soil, 
in the bottom of this hole, incorporate 
two or three forkfuls of well rotted ma¬ 
nure. Replace the removed soil to with¬ 
in 1" or so of the surface, mixing with 
it two or three handfuls of animal fer¬ 
tilizer rich in nitrogen. Cover the top 
with fine, fresh soil, level with the sur¬ 
face (not built up in a mound), and it 
is ready for planting the seed. 
Planting in very wet soil is often 
risky, but sometimes it can hardly be 
avoided. Under this condition, it may 
be advisable to ridge up the soil several 
inches high where a row of plants is to 
be set out or planted from seed. Hills, 
in such soil as this, may be elevated a 
few inches above the general level; but 
they should be broad and flat so that the 
rain will not run off of them. As a 
general rule, however, it is both easier 
and better to have your garden so thor¬ 
oughly drained that this method will not 
be required. 
Putting in the Seed 
I have dwelt at length upon the 
details for planting because they are, 
after all, the biggest part of the work 
and the part which cannot be learned 
from the popular planting table. When 
to sow, how deep to plant, how much' 
seed to use for 100' of row—all these 
things you can get from a dozen sources, 
if you do not already know them. But 
there are some little wrinkles about actu¬ 
ally putting the seed into the soil which 
the beginner is likely to learn only from 
experience. 
First of all, then, there are three 
things to consider in planting. (1) 
Time; (2) Size of seed and condition 
of soil; (3) Method of planting. 
As to the first, the dates given in 
your planting table are, of course, ap¬ 
proximate. They may vary two or three 
(Continued on page 74) 
