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BY EBEN E. REXFORD HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK & LONDON COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED MARCH, 1915 A-B-C OF GARDENING A-B-C OF GARDENING MAKING THE GARDEN The first thing to do in making a garden is to spade up the soil to the depth of a foot. The second thing to do is to work this spaded-up soil over and over until it is thoroughly pulverized. The third thing to do is to add to it whatever fertilizer you decide on using. This may be old, well-rotted manure from the cow-yard, if you can get it, for it is the ideal fertilizer for nearly all kinds of plants. But if you live in city or village the probabilities are that you will be obliged to make use of a substitute. Bone meal—the finely ground article—is about as good as...
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When the soil has been thoroughly pulverized and the fertilizer has been well worked into it you are ready for sowing seed—that is, if the weather conditions are favorable. It is always advisable to wait until all danger from frost is over and the ground is warm enough to facilitate prompt germination. At the North the seed of our hardier plants can safely be put into the ground about the middle of May, but the tenderer kinds can well afford to wait until the first of June. In sowing seed don't follow the old way of making a furrow an inch deep in the soil, by drawing the hoe-handle along it, and then covering the seed deeply. Fine seed often fail to germinate when given this treatment. Simply scatter the seed on the surface , and then sift a little fine soil over it, or press the ground down firmly...
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MAKING A LAWN Most home-makers labor under the impression that it would be useless for them to undertake the making of a lawn, thinking it requires the knowledge and experience of the professional gardener to make such an undertaking successful. This is where they make a mistake. Anybody can make a lawn that will afford a great deal of pleasure if he sets about it, provided he is willing to do some hard work. The first thing to do is to make the surface of the ground level. This can be done by the use of spade and hoe. Take off the tops of the hillocks, if there happens to be any, and fill the hollows with the soil thus obtained. When you have a fairly even surface, go over it with an iron-toothed rake and make it fine and mellow. It is very important that all stones and rubbish...
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THE BORDER The owner of a small lot is often puzzled to know what to do with it. Of course there must be flowers, but where shall they be put? As a general thing, they are set out here and there, indiscriminately, and the result of such haphazard planting is far from pleasing. There ought always to be at least a suggestion of system in all garden arrangements. To scatter shrubs all over the lawn breaks up the sense of breadth and dignity which should characterize it, however small it may be. This being the case, the best place for shrubs and perennials is at the sides of the lot, leaving the rear for the vegetable garden. A border extending along the sides of the lot will serve as a frame for the home picture, and will be found the most satisfactory arrangement possible for small places. It ought to...
3 minute read
ANNUALS The owner of a garden that is so small that but few plants can be grown in it naturally desires to confine her selection to such kinds as will be likely to give the greatest amount of bloom and require the least amount of care. At the head of the list it is quite safe to place the sweet-pea. This old and universal favorite blooms profusely and throughout the entire season if prevented from ripening seed. It is beautiful, wonderfully varied as to coloring, and so fragrant that it is almost a rival of the rose in this respect. It requires a treatment so unlike that of ordinary plants that it is really in a class by itself, if one would secure the best results from it. It likes to get a start early in the season and to have its roots deep in the soil, where they will...
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VINES If any one were to ask me to tell him what vine I considered best adapted to amateur culture in all respects , I would decide in favor of the ampelopsis—better known in many localities as Virginia creeper. My decision would be based on the beauty of the vine, its rapid growth, its hardiness, and its ability to furnish its own support on walls of wood, brick, or stone. Its foliage is very pleasing in summer, but it is doubly so in autumn, when its green gives place to a brilliant crimson and a rich maroon. At that season of the year all our flowering vines are eclipsed by its magnificent coloring. It grows well in all kinds of soil—better, of course, in a good one than a poor one—and it will go to the eaves of a three-story house if given an opportunity to do so, and cover...
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SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN There will be a good deal of work to do in the garden, no matter how small it is. A good deal of this work will consist in cleaning up and removing rubbish, unless attention was given to this in the fall. The tops of last year's perennials should be cut away close to the ground, and dead annuals should be pulled up and added to the refuse-heap. If a covering was provided for your plants, it should be removed altogether or dug into the soil about the roots of the plants it protected. Never allow it to remain upon the ground about the plants unless it is of a kind that is not particularly noticeable. This should not be done, however, until the season is so far advanced that all danger of severe freezing is over. A plant that has had winter protection will...
5 minute read
MIDSUMMER IN THE GARDEN We somehow get the impression that when our garden is made in spring that's about all there will be for us to do. Our share of the work has been done, and if Nature does her share, well and good. But in our endeavor to shirk further responsibility on to Nature we lose sight of the fact that gardening isn't a thing of periods. It is, on the contrary, a thing of one period, and that period covers the entire season. We soon discover that weeds will need attention every day. It really seems, sometimes, as if the pulling of one weed gave a score of others an opportunity to take its place, and that these were waiting impatiently to step into the shoes of their predecessors, if such a figure of speech is allowable in this connection. Neglect weeding for a week and you will...
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WINDOW-BOXES Blessed be window boxes! They are excellent substitutes, on a small scale, for a garden, and almost any woman can have them, while a real garden is out of the question for a majority of the women who love flowers. A garden on the ground is one of the impossibilities for most women in the city who could well afford one, so far as financial ability is concerned, but she can make her windows so attractive with flowers and "green things growing" that she will not greatly miss the garden in a crowded city whose every foot of land is worth thousands of dollars and therefore cannot be given up to anything as unprofitable, from a pecuniary standpoint, as flower-growing. The culture of plants in a window-box seems an easy thing to the person who sees plants growing luxuriantly in it. But it is not as easy as it...
7 minute read
THE USE OF GROWING PLANTS FOR TABLE DECORATION The woman who takes pride in making the family table attractive at all times finds nothing quite so effective for this purpose as flowers, and these she cannot always afford. But she need not be without material for beautifying the home table if she has windows in which plants can be grown, for there are many plants that are quite as attractive as flowers. But a good many persons have not yet learned that they can be made satisfactory substitutes for cut flowers, because they have not taken the trouble to study the thing out. They have heretofore depended on cut flowers for table decoration, as have their friends, and it has not occurred to them to get out of the rut they are in and think out new ways and means for making home pleasant. A well-shaped, medium-sized plant with fine...
6 minute read
DECORATIVE PLANTS There are few homes nowadays in which at least one plant of ornamental foliage cannot be found. I know of many in which some have had place so long that they have come to be considered as members of the family. Especially is this true among German people, who have an especial fondness for bride's myrtle and English ivy. In many of these homes I have found finer plants than I have seen in any greenhouse. I am not sure that they do not get more care than the children of the family. The myrtle to which I refer has small, fine foliage, evergreen in character, of a rich, glossy green. It branches freely, and in two or three years becomes a good-sized shrub. It does not bloom very freely, but this does not detract much from the value of the plant, as its flowers are small and...
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THE BULB-BED The bulb-bed should be located in some part of the yard where there is good, natural drainage or where it will be an easy matter to secure an artificial one by excavating the soil to the depth of a foot and a half and filling the bottom of it with material that will not readily decay, such as broken brick, crockery, or crushed stone. The object is to provide escape for surplus water from the soil above in spring. No bulb can be grown successfully in a soil that is unduly retentive of water about its roots. In arranging for artificial drainage, after filling the bottom of the excavation with five or six inches of drainage material, the soil that was thrown out should be returned to it, working into it, as this is done, a liberal amount of good manure. The best of all fertilizers for all...
7 minute read
GETTING READY FOR WINTER A supply of good potting-soil should be put into the cellar for use during the winter if needed. Often a plant will have outgrown its pot, thus making immediate repotting necessary in order to continue the healthy condition of it, but if there is no good soil at hand it will be obliged to do the best it can until spring comes, and by that time it will have received a check from which it will be a long time in recovering, and quite often it will die as the result of failure to give it proper attention when it was in most need of it. If you have a supply of potting-soil in stock there will be no excuse for not caring for your plants promptly when the advisability of repotting is indicated. A very satisfactory potting-soil is composed of garden loam, two parts; leaf-mold...
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BULBS FOR WINTER FLOWERING Whenever any one writes me that she is fond of flowers, and would be delighted if she could have some in winter, but that she fails to get satisfaction from the ordinary house-plant, I always advise her to try bulbs. For I know that one is reasonably sure of getting fine flowers from this class of plants, provided we are willing to give them the right kind of treatment. One will get more flowers from them than she can expect from the ordinary collection found in the average window garden—we can have them through the entire winter if we plan for a succession—and we have few flowers that equal those of the bulbs in beauty. And, last but not least, they require really less care than is demanded by the majority of house-plants. Three things are essential to success in the culture of bulbs in the...
6 minute read
THE WINTER WINDOW-GARDEN In fall, when we bring in the plants that have been growing out of doors during the summer, they usually look healthy, and we congratulate ourselves that we are likely to have a fine crop of flowers from them later on. But soon we see some of their leaves turning yellow and falling off, and though they may make considerable growth, it is unsatisfactory because it is spindling and weak. If buds form, they are pretty sure to blight before reaching maturity, and, instead of having the fine, floriferous plants we had counted on, we have a window-garden that is more noticeable for its discouraged look than for anything else. The owner of such a garden too often aims to remedy the unfavorable conditions which exist in it by applying some kind of fertilizer to her plants. By doing this she simply makes a bad matter worse,...
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THE INSECT ENEMIES OF PLANTS Every woman who attempts to grow flowers in the house will sooner or later have to wage warfare against insects. Perhaps the first battle will have to be fought with the aphis, or plant-louse. This insect sucks the sap—the life-blood of the plant—from stalk and leaf, and soon, if let alone, it will exhaust the vitality of the plant to a degree that is wholly incompatible with health. In fact, if allowed to have its way, it will kill your plants, for it propagates its species with such rapidity that a plant will soon be literally covered with them. We used to kill off these insects by fumigating the plants infested with them with tobacco smoke, and in doing it we made ourselves about as sick as the insects were, and the nauseating fumes of it clung to everything in and about the house for...
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GARDENING FOR CHILDREN If you want to keep children out of mischief give them a little garden. One that they can call their own will afford them far more pleasure than they get out of working in your garden. Of course they will not be expected to go ahead with garden work at first and make much success at it without assistance from some one, and by object-lessons, but they will soon master the fundamental points of it, and when they have done that they will surprise you by the facility with which they pick up the information that grows out of their early experience and the amount of work that they will accomplish all by themselves. And you will be pleased to see how interested they are in the new undertaking. It will not seem like work to them. It will be play, and play of such a healthy...
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HOME AND GARDEN CONVENIENCES There are many ways in which work in the garden and about the home can be varied in such a manner as to give a variety of comparatively new and pleasing effects with so little trouble and expense that the amateur gardener and home-maker who would like "something new" will, I feel sure, be delighted to undertake some of them. One is a floral awning for the windows which are exposed to strong sunshine. A frame is made of lath, the width of the window and half its depth, by nailing four of the strips together in a square and then fastening other strips across it in a diamond or lattice fashion. Attach this frame to the top of the window-casing by door-butts. Then push the lower part of it away from the window until you have it at the angle at which a cloth awning...
33 minute read
GARDEN DON'TS Don't let your springtime enthusiasm lead you to undertake more than you feel quite sure of being able to carry out. Keep in mind the fact that there will be work to do all through the season in order to make your garden a success, and think over what the result will be if you fail to give your plants all the care they need after you have got them well under way. Don't give them a chance to say that you haven't given them fair treatment because your enthusiasm waned with the season. Don't attempt to grow all the plants that the florists describe so attractively in their catalogues. Concentrate your efforts on the best ones—that is, the ones best adapted to amateur gardening. Give these the best possible care. This advice applies with equal pertinence to all phases of gardening, outdoors or indoors. Don't pattern your...
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A CHAPTER OF HELPFUL HINTS In some of the foregoing chapters I have had something to say about the advisability of using seed in which each color is kept by itself in order to secure the greatest possible degree of color-harmony in the garden. Many persons tell us that they cannot afford to pay the extra prices which the seedsmen put on unmixed seed. It is true that it costs more than the seed in which all colors are jumbled together, and it is also true that plants grown from it are really no better than those grown from mixed seed, but the fact remains that it gives so much more satisfactory results, from an artistic standpoint, that it is not throwing money away, as some claim, to make use of it. Of course if one gets as much pleasure from a mass of color without regard to harmony as...