74 
House & Garden- 
WtasSm 
Grow Your Own Vegetables 
There is greater need this year 
than ever to help increase the food 
supply. 
Plant and cultivate a garden, 
and thus do your share. You’ll cut 
down living expenses, too. 
You save time, labor, money, 
and get bigger and better crops by 
using 
Planet Jr. 
Garden Implements 
No. 25 Planet Jr Combined Hill and Drill Seeder, 
Double and Single Wheel Hoe, Cultivator and Plow 
sows all garden seeds from smallest up to peas and 
beans, in hills or in drills, rolls down and marks next 
row at one passage, and enables you to cultivate up 
to two acres a day all through the season. A double 
and single wheel hoe in one. Straddles crops till 20 
inches high, then works between them. Steel frame 
and 14 inch steel wheels. A splendid combination for 
the family garden, onion grower, or large gardener. 
No. 17 Planet Jr is the highest type of single-wheel 
hoe made. It is a hand machine whose light, durable 
construction enables a man, woman or boy to do the 
cultivation in a garden in the easiest, quickest and 
best way. We make 24 styles—various prices. 
New 72-page Catalog, free ! 
Illustrates Planet Jrs in action and describes over 
55 tools, including Seeders, Wheel Hoes, Horse Hoes, 
Harrows, Orchard, Beet and Pivot-wheel Riding 
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S L ALLEN & CO Box 1110K Philadelphia 
Building the Garden 
(Continued /i 
weeks in either direction. I have planted 
onions on the twenty-ninth of March 
one year, and gone fishing through IS" 
of rotten ice on April first of the year 
following. There are a few things which 
it is an advantage to plant just as soon 
as the ground can be worked—that is, 
as soon as it is dried out sufficiently to 
be spaded and raked without being 
lumpy and sticky. These are smooth 
peas, radishes, early turnips and kohl¬ 
rabi. The balance of the hardy vege¬ 
tables, including the root crops, cabbage 
and lettuce plants, should follow after 
a few days to a couple of weeks, ac¬ 
cording to weather conditions—as a gen¬ 
eral rule, when the plum and peach 
trees are coming into bloom. Potatoes, 
cauliflower, the hardier varieties of sweet 
corn such as Golden Bantam, and wrin¬ 
kled peas may be put in at a third plant¬ 
ing a week or two later. The tender 
vegetables—beans, corn, etc.—when the 
apple trees are in bloom. 
As to size of seed and condition of 
soil, general groups can be considered 
as follows: 
Cover small seed (carrots, lettuce, 
kohlrabi, leak, onions and turnips) 
about Ya," deep. Parsley and celery, 
which are still smaller, and are slow to 
germinate, should be barely covered from 
sight, and, to assist germination, should 
be soaked for several hours in lukewarm 
water before planting. 
Cover medium sized seed (beets, pars¬ 
nips, cucumbers, salsify, spinach, swiss 
chard) about J4 ff deep. 
Cover large seeds (beans, corn, pump¬ 
kin, squash and so forth) 1" to 2" deep. 
These covering depths, however, are 
not arbitrary; they depend upon the 
condition of the soil as well as upon the 
size of the seed. When planting early 
in spring, in soil that is saturated with 
moisture and still quite cold, plant shal¬ 
lower and cover to a less depth than 
specified above. When planting in late 
spring and midsummer, when the soil is 
dry and hot on the surface and more cool 
and moist deeper down, the depth may 
be increased or even doubled, provided 
the soil is kept loose and fine on the 
surface. This both conserves tire mois¬ 
ture in the soil and makes it possible for 
the sprouting seeds to push up easily 
through it. 
As to the method of planting—in 
drills, rows or hills—that also is indi¬ 
cated in the ordinary planting table, 
with perhaps the following exception : 
Many things, such as cucumbers, 
melons and sweet corn, which usually 
■om page 72) 
have been planted in hills, are being 
planted more and more in rows. This 
has advantages where the wheel hoe in¬ 
stead of the hand hoe is used for doing 
most of the cultivating. It is, how¬ 
ever, a little more difficult to give the 
plants adequate protection from beetles 
and bugs during the early stages of 
growth, if frames are used to afford the 
protection. On the other hand, it is 
possible to spray more thoroughly than 
when the plants are growing in hills, and 
consequently are much more crowded 
than if spaced evenly along the row. 
The seed in either drills or rows should 
be sown several times as thick as the 
plants will stand after thinning, as indi¬ 
cated by the planting table. Here again, 
conditions must be taken into considera¬ 
tion, for the percentage of germination 
will be much lower in the early spring, 
when the ground is cold, than in May 
and June, and the seed accordingly must 
be sown thicker in order to be sure of 
a full stand in the row. 
Preparation for the setting out of 
plants should, as a general thing, in¬ 
clude the use of a little fertilizer as a 
starter where each plant is to be set. 
The handiest way of applying this in a 
small garden, where there are likely to 
be but one or two rows of each kind of 
plant, is to mark off the rows and cross¬ 
mark where the plants are to be set; 
then take the hoe (a heart-shaped one 
is the best for this purpose), and go 
along and make a good-sized hole at 
each mark. Half a handful of fertilizer 
can be dropped into each hole and then 
thoroughly mixed with the soil before 
filling the hole up, and marking it so 
that the exact spot can be found again 
when setting the plants. This extra 
loosening of the soil to the depth of 
several inches just where the plant is to 
be set will make the work of setting out 
the plant so much less that the extra 
time taken for applying the fertilizer 
will be largely made up in the time saved 
in setting the plants. 
The “starter” fertilizer, to which I 
have referred several times in this ar¬ 
ticle, is best made up of about equal 
parts of fine ground bone, tankage, and 
dried blood or cottonseed meal. This 
will give much better results than ordi¬ 
nary commercial fertilizer, and it is very 
much safer to use. With ordinary care 
there will be no risk of injury to the 
roots of the plants, as is often the case 
in using ordinary ready mixed commer¬ 
cial fertilizer in the hill or row. Buy the: 
ingredients separately. 
The War Garden Department 
(Continued from page 55) 
pruning—to get the finest blooms—they 
should be cut back to three to five buds 
to a branch, and about half of the previ¬ 
ous season’s ^ranches removed alto¬ 
gether. The hybrid teas, and the teas, 
may be left with from one and a half 
times to twice as many buds as the 
hybrid perpetuals; but here again the 
weakest growing plants should be cut 
back the most. The teas and hybrid 
teas should not be pruned until two or 
three weeks after the hybrid perpetuals, 
as they are much more tender, and it is 
difficult to distinguish the dead wood 
until after the buds start. 
The second rule of rose pruning is 
always to cut above an outside bud. 
The reasons for this are that the top 
bud is the one which pushes out first 
and makes the strongest growth after 
pruning; it is desirable to keep the plant 
as open as possible, to admit sunlight 
and air; and as the outside buds grow 
away from the center of the plant, the 
latter is kept in an open form. 
The climbing roses are for the most 
part of the class that blooms on last 
year’s wood; therefore they should not 
be pruned until just after they flower. 
But it is often advantageous to remove 
the several years’ old growth down to the 
ground, or to the main stem, to encour¬ 
age vigorous new growth; overcrowding 
means unsightly, plants, weaker foliage 
and poorer flowers. 
Almost with the passing of the last 
snowbank the first shrubs, such as the 
forsythia, begin to come into bloom. 
Common sense would indicate that these 
should not be pruned until they are 
through flowering, as it is obvious that 
to do so would sacrifice just that much 
of the year’s bloom. But all the shrubs 
which bloom in summer or fall, such 
as the hardy hydrangeas, althea, buddleia, 
calycanthus, hibiscus, spirea Anthony 
Waterer, etc., flowering on new wood 
which will be produced between now 
and blooming time, should be pruned 
now. 
Most shrubs do not require very severe 
pruning. They should be kept in good 
shape, and the very old wood occasion- 
(Continued on page 76) 
