Grace Tabor

“ We cannot go over the list of all the plants which may be growing in your garden, and learn especially what each one needs the most; that might be a pretty big task, but we can learn just what each of the most important plant-foods does for the plant, after we are sure that the one great fact of plants not all eating alike, which I have just mentioned, is understood, And then we should be able to tell pretty accurately what any particular plant lacks, if it does lack something, by the symptoms which it displays. ”

“ This takes down into the soil a very great amount of nitrogen, which this particular kind of plant stores up in large quantities in its seeds and even in its roots, besides the humus, or vegetable mold, of the stalks and roots—and humus is most desirable, because it helps retain moisture in the ground, and makes the soil light and porous, so that roots can penetrate it easily. This is one reason why stable manure ought always to be used when working over the ground, even though some chemical fertilizer is to be added later. ”

“ There are several kinds of blankets to use on garden beds, and some are much better than others, for some hold much less water than others. Of them all, oak leaves, raked out from under big oak-trees in the woods, or from the lawn if an oak-tree grows there, are the very best of all, because they lie loosely packed, yet are thick and dense enough to be an ideal protection. If you cannot get oak leaves, however, straw will do nicely, or hay, or marsh-grass—or even stable manure, if it is old and not steaming, and has plenty of litter and straw in it. ”

“ These three principal things that plants live upon—that are to them what meat and vegetables and sugar are to humans—are nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash; and in the order in which they are here named they encourage and stimnlate, respectively, top growth—that is, leaf and branch and green generally—flowers, and woody growth and fruit. And they are furnished to the plant, the first by nitrate of soda, as it comes in the powder from the drug-store, or by cotton-seed meal, or by what is called green fertilizing—which I shall tell you about presently—and by stable manure ”

“ Never put manure onto the lawn, however, nor onto the surface of the ground anywhere, for it is always full of weed seeds, and these will overrun everything in no time at all, ruining the turf and making the garden a perfect plague-spot. Use it only when the early work of turning over the soil is going on, so that it can be turned under the surface by spading or plowing. ”

“ This winter blanket is really a great deal more than a protective covering to keep the cold in, and the warmth out, of the ground. You know, when you walk through the woods, how deep and “springy” the ground feels under your feet. ”

“ You will often hear about using lime in the soil, and you must know what this does and why it is necessary, even though it is not a direct food for plants, as the other things are. First of all, it sweetens the soil—sil can be very sour, you know, just the same as anything else, and some plants detest sour soil—and then it acts directly upon the little dirt particles that make up the soil, so that where these are small and packed close, as in heavy clay, they separate and lie farther apart ”

“ Just as soon as it is frozen, however—right away!—put the blankets on the beds, For, of course, they must have blankets, even if they are only garden beds, This seems odd—does it not?—to blanket frozen things; but, you see, the trick is to catch Jack Frost under the blankets, once he comes in, and hold him prisoner until winter is absolutely over, and he is willing—yes, indeed, anxious—to run away and stay away, It is when he is not caught and held fast that he does his damage, for he can slip out sometimes, even in mid-winter ”

“ Into the wire box thus made put all the dead leaves that are raked up, all clippings from the lawn, and all tops of plants when these are cut away, as they must be—which presently you shall hear about. Anything from the garden, indeed, providing that it is healthy growth and perfectly free from insect pests, should go into the compost heap; but usually I burn the tops of plants and use their ashes, This does away with the slightest chance of harboring a disease or a noxious creature of some kind, and ashes are particularly good in the compost. ”

“ The little plants from the seed-bed will he large enough to transplant into their permanent places by the middle of the month, so, of course, the permanent places must be made ready for them at once. If you are going to make a garden entirely of perennials, and are beginning it anew and apart from the summer garden or border of annuals, here is a little plan which you may like to follow. You will find it much easier to decide where each thing shall go by making a map of the garden first, and planting cach thing on paper. ”

“ Yet this is exactly the way we sometimes feed our plants—and then wonder why they do not thrive.
The first thing to be learned about plant catering is this: all plants do not eat the same quantities of all kinds of food. Most fertilizers—which is the name we have given to plant-foods generally, just as we call our own foods “groceries” have the three essentials which are necessary to keep plants alive. ”

“ The larger amount is for heavy clay; the smaller for light, sandy soil; and you will find it easy to tell the middle kinds, between clay and sand, that will need from twenty to thirty ounces, or a pound and a half, roughly speaking. You will not have to be as exact about any of these things as you would be with baking-powder and butter and sugar when making a cake.
Collect the lawn clippings during the hot weather and spread them around all your garden plants, to protect the earth above their roots from baking under the sun, as well as to keep the moisture from being drawn up out of it. ”

“ But it is one of the very best methods that there is of treating a large tract of land; and when you grow up to be a farmer (?) , you will, of course, want to know about it! So I may as well tell you here. It is raising a crop of clover, soy-beans, cow-peas, or any kind of legume on it (a legume is a plant whose seeds are contained in a pod that splits open into two pieces, just as bean-pods or pea-pods do) , letting this crop grow to maturity, and blossom, and form its rich mealy seeds ”

“ Choose a place that is not very far away, of course, and yet one that is not in plain view from the garden, for it is hardly to be expected of a rag-bag that it shall be decorative. Drive four stakes into the ground—four long stakes, let us say from thirty inches to three feet long, marking the corners of a square space of about four feet. ”

“ But some contain more of one and less of the others, while some plants need less of one, perhaps, and more of the others. So just giving all plants generally “plenty of fertilizer” is not at all what the skilled gardener or the thoughtful gardener does. He watches to see what they need, and then he supplies them with that particular thing,
The Spencer hybrid sweet-peas, for instance, need a great deal of nitrogen, as do all the members of the pea family ”

“ Of course, therefore, we none of us can entertain for an instant, I am sure, any proposal to increase their anxiety, nor can we cherish a wish to follow any line of conduct that is plainly annoying or unkind or inconsiderate. ”

“ Use two to eight ounces for every four square feet—that is, from four to sixteen table-spoonfuls, for lime weighs a little less than ground bone, and it takes, therefore, a little more to make an ounce. A border two feet wide and ten feet long would need ten to forty ounces, or twenty to eighty table-spoonfuls—which is quite a job of measuring, is it not? ”

“ For he remembered all the perplexing things of his own big garden at home, and haw many times he had asked himself that very same question during the years he had been making it.
When we consider how very important eating is to boys and girls and men and women and dogs and cats and horses, and every living thing, we can begin to realize how very important it is to plants ”

“ Such ornament is never dropped into the middle of a breadth of some splendid material, but is always used to embellish its edges, to finish them and enrich them or else a great mass of it is spread entirely over such material, covering it almost completely. ”

“ The green fertilizer which we have spoken about, and which is one of the things that contains a great deal of nitrogen, furnishes a very slow way of doing things, and one you will not care about trying right away, I expect. ”

“ This will leach down through it during the winter, and when spring comes, the whole mass will be the very finest kind of plant-food, ready to mix with the soil of flower beds or borders, or of the seed-bed, or that wherein house-plants are to be planted. The uses of compost, indeed, are almost too many to mention ”

“ They have been overfed till their digestions are so troublesome that they can’t do any fine work, like making blossoms, to save their lives. Look at this Countess Spencer; why, it ought to be covered with flowers as big as little orchids ”