Getting Our Gardens Ready

Mrs. JAMES H. BEEMAN

Timely Hints for Those Who Wish to Reap Lovely Results

President of the Hohokus, N. J., Garden Club

NOW is the time when all true lovers of gardens should take thought and improve the lagging months of early spring by preparing for the loveliness to come. Daily I try to impress upon my friendsand neighbours the necessity for this preliminary work. "He forehanded", I warn them. "Prepare your ground." As I pass up and down the streets of our little village, I pause before this or that house and ask its occupants, "Have you taken the straw from your beds as yet? Why do you not get busy and remove all that debris from around your cold-frames?"

Some people take these suggestions in good part. Others—not a few, I regret to say— show an odd resentment. One old man made a remark about minding my own business, accompanied by a coarse oath.

But I am not discouraged, and shall continue doing this sort of missionary work for what I consider the good of my neighbours' souls. Later on, I am sure, they will thank me. Very few realize the importance of an early start in gardening. The spring weather deceives them. As I pen these lines, a mid-February snow storm is whirling down from the fir-clad hills, filling the hollows and borders of my gaunt garden. But, in my mind's eye, I see it a riot of colour, foaming with the loveliness of June and July. But to have this loveliness, I must begin now. It is the ideal time.

Companionship in Labour

THERE is very little frost in the ground this year ;a crust not more than two or three inches thick. Any able-bodied man can quickly break this out. My husband is in bed this morning, suffering from a lame back. He tried to do a little too much yesterday, and the mattock was rather too heavy for him; but. he will be all right in the morning, and in the end it will be good for him. Wives should not fail to impress the healthful qualities of gardening upon their husbands. After a long, sedentary day at the office, there is nothing finer than the relaxation and muscle stretching of an hour or two among the flower beds. It starts the blood circulating, and wakes up the entire system. Often, as my husband works, I can hear the snap of some recalcitrant cartilage or the click of a knee-cap as it slips out of place; but I am always ready to run out and push his joints back into place, and so the happy days go on.

This is one of the lovely things about gardening—the wonderful companionship it creates between husband and wife. Each has his or her own share in the work. The husband breaks the stubborn turf, rolls up the wheelbarrows full of the life-giving enrichment, spades it in, and removes roots and stones, while the wife busily reads the seed catalogue or decides where she shall put her good man to work when he shall have finished the task upon which he is engaged. My husband and I both love our garden, I perhaps more than he; but then it is, in a way, the child of my brain, while his relation to it is more manual and less imaginative.

The first thing to be done in the early spring is to remove the litter and debris which have been allowed to cover the garden during the winter months. This is not as simple as it sounds, for under the protecting quilt nestle the little darlings of last year, the budding perennials, which must be carefully raked around.

I find that it is by no means safe to trust my husband alone at this sort of work. Something about the nature of the soil works upon his temper, so that he is apt to become almost savage. On one occasion, he completely removed all vestiges of a precious planting of Bellonium—the double variety, which it had taken me four years to produce. I made him sort over four barrels of refuse in my attempt to rescue the plants, but the results hardly justified it. Now we do this part of the work together, he with the rake and hoe, while I follow him about. Before attacking a plant, he says, "This?", and I answer, "Yes", or "No", as the case may be.

While cleaning up, the dry stalks of last year's flowers should be carefully removed, without wrenching the roots or disturbing the plants which are apt to be slightly loosened in the soil by the action of the frost. We have just gone through this long manicuring process with our chrysanthemums, and my husband's hands were really quite torn when we finished. He is callousing nicely, however, and the chrysanthemums are beautiful to behold. I would not lose them for worlds. I have one especially fine one which is named after me, the Mrs. J. H. Beeman. It has a large, white bloom of very fine petals; and when my husband wears one to the office, he looks exactly as if he had a portion of cold slaw on the lapel of his coat.

When all the old straw has been carefully removed, 1 allow my husband to dig carefully round the old plants and to turn over the places where the new ones are going. We are then ready for the important business of enrichment.

Fattening the Lean Earth

ENRICHMENT is commonly spoken of by a more vulgar term, but I prefer my own word, and have succeeded in having it adopted officially by our Garden Club. It is a necessary adjunct to all gardens. In its use there are several schools, related to the various domestic animals from which the product is derived. Personally, I find good in all, and hold no brief for the horse against the cow, or the sheep against either. My husband works equally well in any medium, and that is the main thing. But an important thing to be considered is that, with the appalling increase of automobiles, all forms of enrichment are daily becoming more and more scarce and expensive.

It is well, therefore, to buy early and avoid the rush. In this way only can you be sure of results, while the flowers of your less forehanded friends will be smaller than yours and inferior in every way—which is, of course, one of the great delights of gardening.

So keen was my husband about the success of our little garden that he actually gave me a truck load of the finest mixed enrichment for Christmas, which 1 think was just as cute as could be.

While this out-of-door work is going forward, we are by no means idle in the evenings; for then it is that my husband works on the coldframes that are so important an adjunct to the procuring of large blooms early in the season. First, we find out where we can get a window sash. It is strange how difficult it is to get these from a regular carpenter or contractor. They are always too busy to bother with such a small order as two or three window sash, so my husband and I stroll about our little community and see where we can pick one up that is not being used. A number of our people always go away somewhere in the spring, and it is quite easy to find an unhooked storm sash or bit of porch enclosure that is just the thing.

When I have located something of this sort, 1 tell my husband about it, and in the evening we take the car and motor around in the right direction. Once in a while he says it seems like stealing; but that is silly, for I always know the people well and am absolutely sure that they would not mind in the least.

The rough work of the frame, etc., is then fitted to the sash; and as soon as the snowr is off the ground, we set it out. I show my husband where it is to go, and he digs a neat trench for the sides to set in and banks leaves all around to keep out the cold night air. We are then ready to start our seedlings. Some of these we actually start in the house, in little, shallow trays which my husband makes for me in odd moments out of old box covers.

The Club Seedling Races

ONE of the jolliest features of early gardening is what we of the Garden Club call "seedling races". A number of us plant the same things at the same time, and then at the next meeting we bring our trays and submit them to the judges, who award a prize to the one whose seedlings are the biggest. It is really great fun. I am sorry to say that I was cheated out of the prize last month by a woman I always thought was one of my best friends. We were competing with Ampholiatum seeds, which, as every one knows, produce only the most tiny and delicate seedlings. What did she do but bring a tray of Gloxona Monstrosa, great, rank things, nearly an inch high, and claim they were Ampholiatum. There was no one there who felt competent to decide, so she got the prize, a perfectly adorable trowel, which I could just see my husband using for weeding. He was furious when I told him about it, and you should have seen the look I gave her at church the next Sunday.

My husband liked the idea of these races. He said they added a sporting interest to the game, so he and a friend of his started a radish race. Isn't that like a man? They could think of nothing more beaulifuj than a radish. Well, anyway, they were to match their trays on a certain date; and when my husband went to look at his, he found to his horror that they were all dried up, as if they had been singed We found out afterward that Selma, the maid, had watered them with a bowl of Easter Egg dye which I had left on the wash stand. What does my husband do but run around to the grocer and fill his tray with full-grown radishes! Of course he won, and his friend is wondering to this day how he made his plants grow so fast.

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I always try to have in my garden one or two flowers which no one else will have—queer, freakish things that puzzle people. To do this, I have to keep closely in touch with what the English and Dutch seedsmen are offering; and, also, it requires a great deal of experimentation to know just what will do well in our climate. Sometimes I am greatly disappointed. Last year, I imported some lovely plants of Cephalica, of which a friend of mine took clippings in Paris. They have been growing in the Luxembourg Gardens for sixty years, and yet they curled right up and died in Hohokus. My husband says he can understand this; but really, I can not, for I studied the soil conditions and all that with the greatest care.

The Amenities of Gardening

BUT when you do succeed in raising some rare variety, my, what fun it is! Last year, I had a most marvelous success with a wonderful new Dianthus, a hybridization of the W. J. Bryan and the Baroness de Rothschild—what extraordinary combinations these florists do think of! Well, it was the most beautiful thing. It was called the Dianthus Alwoodii, and I used to have the best times asking my friends if they had any, and then saying, "What, you've never even seen it? My dear, really, your garden is nothing without it."

I am experimenting with several novelties for this season; but, of course, they are secrets at present. In a later issue, I may be able to tell you all about them.

My husband has done most of the rough work in the beds, so I have set him to building me a terrace,which I have always wanted, near the clothes yard. It means carrying quite a lot of stone for filling, but he is as hard as nails, and I want to keep him so during the growing season, for the weeds will soon start, and that means no end of work for both of us.

I want the terrace to lead to a small, formal garden with paths made of flagstones. I think I know where there are some, in a mason's back yard, which I am sure he does not want, for they have been there for ever so long. We could get them, one or two at a time, in the car. I have drawn a sketch of just what I want— a trellised entrance and, in the center— it seems original to me—a sun dial, with some quaint expression, such as "I Mark Only the Sunny Hours", or perhaps the simpler "Tempus Fugit". My husband says he can cast the sun dial in cement, using an old beer keg for a form; but that he thinks the sunny hour inscription would be the more appropriate.