Manual of gardening; a practical guide to the making of home grounds and the growing of flowers, fruits, and vegetables for home use

Front matter

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Book ^ ^_ _

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CHAPTER II The plan of the grounds 8

The picture in the landscape 12

Birds ; and cats

The planting is part of the design or picture 19

The flower-growing should be part of the design .... 27

Defects in flower-growing 28

Lawn flower-beds 29

Mower-borders ol

The old-fashioned garden ° 4

Contents of the flower-borders 34

The value of plants may lie in foliage and form rather than in

bloom oi

Odd and formal trees 40

Poplars and the like 41

Plant-forms 43

Various specific examples .44

An example 45

Another example 4 '

A third example .48

A small back yard 49

A city lot ... . 50

General remarks • • • • '54

Beview . . .' °

CHAPTER III The grading . . . •

i'x x CONTENTS

PAGES

The terrace . . . . 62

The bounding lines ... . . . „ . . .64

Walks and drives 67

The question of drainage, curbing, and gutters ... 69

The materials 73

Making the borders . . . . . . . . . .74

Making the lawn 77

Preparing the ground 77

The kind of grass 78

When and how to sow the seed . . . . .80

Securing a firm sod .81

The mowing . 82

Fall treatment 82

Spring treatment 83

Watering lawns ......... 83

Sodding the lawn . . .84

A combination of sodding and seeding ..... 85

Sowing with sod . . ... . . . . . 86

Other ground covers . . 86

CHAPTER IV The Handling or the Land 87-114

The draining of the land ......... 88

Trenching and subsoiling . . . . . . . . . 90

Preparation of the surf ace 92

The saving of moisture 97

Hand tools for weeding and subsequent tillage and other hand vwrk 101

The hoe 101

Hand- weed ers 106

Trowels and their kind 106

Rollers 108

Markers 108

Enriching the land .110

CHAPTER V Sowing the seeds 116

Propagating by cuttings 118

Dormant stem-cuttings 118

CONTENTS

XI

Cuttings of roots

Green cuttings .

Cuttings of leaves

General treatment Transplanting young seedlings Transplanting established plants and trees

Tub-plants

When to transplant .

Depth to transplant .

Making the rows straight

Cutting-back ; filling .

Eemoving very large trees Winter protection of 'plants Pruning ....

Tree surgery and protection

Tree guards

Mice and rabbits

Girdled trees

Repairing street trees The grafting of plants Keeping records of the plantation The storing of fruits and vegetables The forcing of plants

Coldframes

Hotbeds ....

Management of hotbeds .

CHAPTER VI Protecting Plants from Things that prey on Them

Screens and covers .

Fumigating

Soaking tubers and seeds .

Spraying ....

Insecticide spraying formulas

Fungicide spraying formulas

Treatment for some of the common insects

Treatment for some of the common plant diseases

Xll

CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII The Growing of the Ornamental Plants — The Classes Plants, and Lists

Planting for immediate effect .

The use of "foliage " trees and shrubs

Windbreaks and screens

The making of hedges

The borders

The floioer-beds

Bedding effects .

Plants for subtropical effects Aquatic and bog plants .

Bockeries and alpine plants

1. Plants for Carpet-beds Lists for carpet-beds

2. The Annual Plants . :

List of annuals by color of flowers .

Useful annuals for edgings of beds and walks Annuals that continue to bloom after frost List of annuals suitable for bedding (that is, ,

color)

List of annuals by height ....

Distances for planting annuals

3. Hardy Herbaceous Perennials .

Perennial herbs suitable for lawn and '"'■planting A brief seasonal flower-garden or border list

nials . ■ . . . . !

One hundred extra-hardy perennial herbs

4. Bulbs and Tubers Fall-planted bulbs ....

List of outdoor fall-planted bulbs for the Winter bidbs . ...

Summer bulbs .....

North

5. The Shrubbery ....

LJst of shrubbery plants for the North Shrubs for the South and for ribbon 'or ' ' mass

-beds effect effects of herbaceous peren-

. 215 of

CONTENTS xin

PAGES

6. Climbing Plants 307

Annual herbaceous climbers ........ 310

Perennial herbaceous climbers 3,11

Woody perennial climbers 314

Climbing roses 318

7. Trees for Lawns and Streets 319

List of hardy deciduous trees for the North 322

Non-coniferous trees for the South . . . . . , . . 330

8. Coniferous Evergreen Shrubs and Trees .... 331

List of shrubby conifers 333

Arboreous conifers .......... 334

Conifers for the South • . .336

9. Window-gardens 336

The window-box for outside effect 337

The inside windovj-garden, or " house plants" .... 341

Bulbs in the windoiv-garden 345

Watering house plants 347

Hanging baskets 348

Aquarium 348

Chapter VIII

The Growing of the Ornamental Plants — Instructions on Particular Kinds . 350-407

Abutilons, 351; agapanthus, 351 ; alstremeria, 352 ; amaryllis, 352 ; anemone, 353 ; aralia, 354 ; araucaria, 354 ; auricula, 354 ; azaleas, 355 ; begonias, 356 ; cactus, 358 ; caladium, 359 ; calceolaria, 360 ; calla, 360 ; camellias, 361 ; cannas, 361 ; carnations, 363 ; century plants, 364 ; chrysanthemums, 365 ; cineraria, 367 ; clematis, 367,; coleus, 368 ; crocus, 368 ; croton, 369 ; cyclamen, 370 ; dahlia, 370 ; ferns, 372 ; freesia, 373 ; fuchsia, 373 ; geranium, 374 ; gladiolus, 374 ; gloxinia, 375 ; grevillea, 376 ; hollyhocks, 376 ; hyacinths, 377 ; iris, 378 ; lily, 378 ; lily-of-the-valley, 381 ; mignonette, 381 ; moon-flowers, 381 ; narcissus, 382 ; oleander, 383 ; oxalis, 384 ; palms, 384 ; pandanus, 385 ; pansy, 386 ; pelargonium, 386 ; peony, 387 ; phlox, 388 ; primulas, 389 ; rhododendrons, 390 ; rose, 391 ; smilax, 401 ; stocks, 402 ; sweet pea, 403 ; swainsona, 403 ; tuberose, 404 ; tulips, 405 j violet, 406 j wax plant, 407.

xiv CONTENTS

Chapter IX Pages

Dwarf fruit-trees 409

Age and size of trees 410

Pruning 411

Thinning the fruit 412

Washing and scrubbing the trees ....... 414

Gathering and keeping fruit 414

Almond, 415 ; apples, 416 ; apricot, 420 ; blackberry, 421 ; cherry, 422 ; cranberry, 424 ; currant, 425 ; dewberry, 426 ; fig, 426 ; gooseberry, 427 ; grape, 428 ; mulberry, 432 ; nuts, 433 ; orange, 433 ; peach, 435 ; pear, 437 ; plum, 439 ; quince, 442 ; raspberry, 443 ; strawberry, 445.

Chapter X

The Growing of the Vegetable Plants ..... 451-500 Vegetables for six 454

The classes of vegetables .......... 456

The culture of the leading vegetables ...... 461

Asparagus, 461 ; artichoke, 462 ; artichoke, Jerusalem, 463 ; bean, 463; beet, 466; broccoli, 467; brussels sprouts, 467; cabbage, 468 ; carrot, 471 ; cauliflower, 471 ; celeriac, 472 ; celery, 472; chard, 475 ; chicory, 476 ; chervil, 476 ; collards, 476 ; cives, 477 ; corn salad, 477 ; corn, 477 ; cress, 478 ; cucumber, 478 ; dandelion, 479 ; egg-plant, 480 ; endive, 481 ; garlic, 481 ; horseradish, 481 ; kale, 482 ; kohlrabi, 483 ; leek, 483 ; lettuce, 483 ; mushroom, 484 ; mustard, 487 ; muskmelon, 487 ; okra, 488 ; onion, 488 ; parsley, 490 ; parsnip, 490 ; pea, 490 ; pepper, 491 ; potato, 492 ; radish, 493 ; rhubarb, 493 ; salsify, 494 ; sea-kale, 495 ; sorrel, 495 ; spearmint, 495 ; spinach, 495 ; squash, 496 ; sweet-potato, 496 ; tomato, 497 ; turnips and rutabagas, 498 ; watermelon, 499.

CHAPTER XI For the North 504

For the South 516

Index „ 527

LIST OF PLATES

PLATE

I. The open center Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

II. The plan of the place 8

III. Open center treatment in a semi-tropical country . . .20

IV. Subtropical bedding against a building. Caladiums, cannas,

abutilons, permanent rhododendrons, and other large stuff, with tuberous begonias and balsams between .... 40 V. A subtropical bed. Center of cannas, with border of Pennisetum longistylum (a grass) started in late February or early

March 50

VI. A tree that gives character to a place 70

VII. Bedding with palms. If a bricked-up pit is made about the porch, pot palms may be plunged in it in spring and pot conifers in winter ; and fall bulbs in tin cans (so that the receptacles will not split with frost) may be plunged among the evergreens .......... 90

VIII. A well-planted entrance. Common trees and bushes, with

Boston ivy on the post, and Berberis Thunbergii in front . 120 IX. A rocky bank covered with permanent informal planting . . 150 X. A shallow lawn pond, containing water-lilies, variegated sweet flag, iris, and subtropical bedding at the rear ; fountain covered with parrot's feather (Myriophyllum proserpina-

coides) 230

XL The back yard, with summer house, and gardens beyond . . 250 XII. The back yard, with heavy flower-garden planting . . . 270

XIII. The pageant of summer. Gardens of C. W. Dowdeswell, Eng-

land, from a painting by Miss Parsons 290

XIV. Virginia creeper screen, on an old fence, with wall-flowers

and hollyhocks in front 307

XV. Scuppernong grape, the arbor vine of the South. This plate shows the noted scuppernongs on Koanoke Island, of which the origin is unknown, but which were of great size more

than one hundred years ago 318

xv

XVI

LIST OF PLATES

PLATE

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

FACING PAGE

The flower-garden of China asters with border, one of the

dusty millers (Centanrea) 330

The peony. One of the most steadfast of garden flowers . 350

Cornflower or bachelor's button. Centaurea Cyanus . . 370 Pyracantha in fruit. One of the best ornamental-fruited

plants for the middle and milder latitudes .... 390 A simple but effective window-box, containing geraniums,

petunias, verbenas, heliotrope, and vines .... 405

The king of fruits. Newtown as grown in the Pacific country 416

Wall-training of a pear tree 430

Cherry currant ......... 445

Golden bantam sweet corn 477

The garden radish, grown in fall, of the usual spring sorts . 493

A MANUAL OF GARDENING

MANUAL OF GAKDENING

Chapter I The Point Of View

Wherever there is soil, plants grow and produce their kind, and all plants are interesting; when a person makes a choice as to what plants he shall grow in any given place, he becomes a gardener or a farmer; and if the conditions are such that he cannot make a choice, he may adopt the plants that grow there by nature, and by making the most of them may still be a gardener or a farmer in some degree.

Every family, therefore, may have a garden. If there is not a foot of land, there are porches or windows. Wherever there is sunlight, plants may be made to grow; and one plant in a tin-can may be a more helpful and inspiring garden to some mind than a whole acre of lawn and flowers may be to another.

The satisfaction of a garden does not depend on the area, nor, happily, on the cost or rarity of the plants. It depends on the temper of the person. One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to cultivate the happy peace of mind that is satisfied with little.

In the vast majority of cases a person will be happier if he has no rigid and arbitrary notions, for gardens are moodish, particularly with the novice. If plants grow and thrive, he should be happy; and if the plants that thrive chance not to be the ones that he planted, they are plants nevertheless, and nature is satisfied with them.

B 1

We are wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but we are happier when we love the things that grow because they must. A patch of lusty pigweeds, growing and crowding in luxuriant abandon, may be a better and more worthy object of affection than a bed of coleuses in which every spark of life and 'spirit and individuality has been sheared out and suppressed. The man who worries morning and night about the dandelions in the lawn will find great relief in loving the dandelions. Each blossom is worth more than a gold coin, as it shines in the exuberant sunlight of the growing spring, and attracts the insects to its bosom. Little children like the dandelions: why may not we? Love the things nearest at hand; and love intensely. If I were to write a motto over the gate of a garden, I should choose the remark that Socrates is said to have made as he saw the luxuries in the market, "How much there is in the world that I do not want I"

I verily believe that this paragraph I have just written is worth more than all the advice with which I intend to cram the succeeding pages, notwithstanding the fact that I have most assiduously extracted this advice from various worthy but, happily, long-forgotten authors. Happiness is a quality of a person, not of a plant or a garden; and the anticipation of joy in the writing of a book may be the reason why so many books on garden-making have been written. Of course, all these books have been good and useful. It would be ungrateful, at the least, for the present writer to say otherwise; but books grow old, and the advice becomes too familiar. The sentences need to be transposed and the order of the chapters varied, now and then, or interest lags. Or, to speak plainly, a new book of advice on handicraft is needed in every decade, or perhaps oftener in these days of many publishers. There has been a long and worthy procession of these handbooks, — Gardiner & Hepburn, M'Mahon, Cobbett — original, pungent, versatile Cobbett ! — Fessenden, Squibb, Bridgeman, Sayers,

THE POINT OF VIEW 3

Buist, and a dozen more, each one a little richer because the others had been written. But even the fact that all books pass into oblivion does not deter another hand from making still another venture.

I expect, then, that every person who reads this book will make a garden, or will try to make one; but if only tares grow where roses are desired, I must remind the reader that at the outset I advised pigweeds. The book, therefore, will suit

1. The ornamental burdock.

everybody, — the experienced gardener, because it will be a repetition of what he already knows ; and the novice, because it will apply as well to a garden of burdocks as of onions;

What a garden is.

A garden is the personal part of an estate, the area that is most intimately associated with the private life of the home. Originally, the garden was the area inside the inclosure or lines of fortification, in distinction from the unprotected area or fields that lay beyond; and this latter area was the particular domain of agriculture. This book understands the garden to be that part of the personal or home premises devoted to ornament, and to the growing of vegetables and fruits. The garden, therefore, is an ill-defined demesne; but the reader must not make the mistake of defining it by dimensions, for one may have a garden in a flower-pot or on a thousand acres. In other words, this book declares that every bit of land that is not used for buildings, walks, drives, and fences, should be planted. What we shall plant — whether sward, lilacs, thistles, cabbages, pears, chrysanthemums, or tomatoes — we shall talk about as we proceed.

The only way to keep land perfectly unproductive is to keep it moving. The moment the owner lets it alone, the planting has begun. In my own garden, this first planting is of pigweeds. These may be followed, the next year, by ragweeds, then by docks and thistles, with here and there a start of clover and grass; and it all ends in June-grass and dandelions.

Nature does not allow the land to remain bare and idle. Even the banks where plaster and lath were dumped two or three years ago are now luxuriant with burdocks and sweet clover; and yet persons who pass those dumps every day say that they can grow nothing in their own yard because the soil is so poor! Yet I venture that those same persons furnish most of the pigweed seed that I use on my garden.

The lesson is that there is no soil — where a house would be built — so poor that something worth while cannot be grown on it. If burdocks will grow, something else will grow; or if nothing else will grow, then I prefer burdocks to sand and rubbish.

The burdock is one of the most striking and decorative of plants, and a good piece of it against a building or on a rough bank is just as useful as many plants that cost money and are difficult to grow. I had a good clump of burdock under my study window, and it was a great comfort; but the man would persist in wanting to cut it down when he mowed the lawn. When I

THE POINT OF VIEW 5

remonstrated, he declared that it was nothing but burdock ; but I insisted that, so far from being burdock, it was really Lappa major, since which time the plant and its offspring have enjoyed his utmost respect. And I find that most of my friends reserve their appreciation of a plant until they have learned its name and its family connections.

The dump-place that I mentioned has a surface area of nearly one hundred and fifty square feet, and I find that it has grown over two hundred good plants of one kind or another this year. This is more than my gardener accomplished on an equal area, with manure and water and a man to help. The difference was that the plants on the dump wanted to grow, and the imported plants in the garden did not want to grow. It was the difference between a willing horse and a balky horse. If a person wants to show his skill, he may choose the balky plant ; but if he wants fun and comfort in gardening, he would better choose the willing one.

I have never been able to find out when the burdocks and mustard were planted on the dump; and I am sure that they were never hoed or watered. Nature practices a wonderfully rigid economy. For nearly half the summer she even refused rain to the plants, but still they thrived; yet I staid home from a vacation one summer that I might keep my plants from dying. I have since learned that if the plants in my hardy borders cannot take care of themselves for a time, they are little comfort to me.

The joy of garden-making lies in the mental attitude and in the sentiments.