The Flower Garden.
(AN EXERCISE LED BY G. C. HAWKINS, FLORIST, MINNEAPOLIS, AT THE 1915 ANNUAL MEETING.)
Mr. Hawkins: We have a question box and I would be glad to have any one use it or rise and state their question. I will answer, giving my experience.
The first question I will read is—"What would you advise about covering in the garden in a season like this?" There are now two questions to be answered. First, what kind of covering? Second, how much?
The first question can be answered this way. Every garden is benefited by a good covering of well decayed manure. Second. Any light covering of straw or horse manure with plenty of straw in it is very good. Leaves make a good covering if they can be kept dry, but leaves when not covered get wet, pack down over a plant and too often do more damage than good. The advantage of covering, or mulching, is to prevent thawing and freezing. To keep plants frozen from fall until spring would be ideal. The ideal winter is one when the snow falls early and stays on during the winter. We should cover lightly the plants that need protection, and when the snow falls, as a warm blanket, the plants will come through the winter in perfect shape.
Mr. Hawkins: We have a question box and would be glad to have any one use it, or rise and ask your question, and we will endeavor to answer it and give our experience along that line.
Mr. Horton: What would you advise for plants that are infected with aphis?
Mr. Hawkins: Spraying is one of the best things and for that we use a weak tobacco solution, so as to moisten the plants, a light mist will do the work. I want to tell a little experience in growing peonies. Last year I tried the experiment of using ground bone around them, which is one of the best fertilizers we have. It contains nearly all the elements of a perfect fertilizer. Just as soon as the little joints come out of the ground, dig a trench about three inches from the main bush, about two inches deep and fill with ground bone and watch the result. I carried this plan out with wonderful success, getting 350 perfect blossoms on twenty-five bushes. It takes bone about thirty days to commence to dissolve. The day of the automobile has brought need for a new fertilizer, and we must carefully select the best that can be had. We must turn back again to the green crops and the artificial fertilizers. This also works well with roses.
Mr. Reckstrom: Would bone do that was bought for the chickens?
Mr. Hawkins: Yes. You understand the finer the particles the quicker it commences to dissolve.
A Member: Where can ground bone be obtained?
Mr. Hawkins: All first class seedsmen have it from small packages of ten pounds to 100 pound sacks.
Mr. Bell: I tried hardwood ashes, and that seemed to be the best thing I struck. There were some shrub lilacs that didn't blossom. One winter I just put the ashes right on, probably a bushel around the one large bush. After that I had plenty of blossoms. On peonies and roses the result seems to be very good.
Residence of G. C. Hawkins, 2913 Fremont Avenue South, Minneapolis.
Mr. Hawkins: No question but what ashes are very fine, for the simple reason the potash in hardwood ashes is a very good fertilizer. I would like to ask some one to give his experience in regard to rust on the tiger lily and the phlox. The perennial phlox is one of the most beautiful flowers we have, and there has been considerable trouble this year with a rust which takes all the leaves off the stalk and is injurious to the blossoms. I did not find any successful remedy for it, and I would be very glad if some member would give his experience.
Mrs. Sawyer: I think you will find bordeaux mixture is good as anything for the rust on phlox. There is another mixture given for use in the English gardens, but their conditions are not the same as ours. It seems that changing the location of the phlox may do it good. Phlox is a plant that wants free circulation of air. Sometimes they get crowded in the garden, and a combination of heat and moisture produces the rust. By changing them to some other ground sometimes it entirely disappears.
Mr. Hawkins: Mrs. Sawyer thinks this would be a remedy, as they require a circulation of fresh air and keep down moisture. We know this, phlox should be divided every third year. If you lift some you will find in the middle a woody dry substance absolutely detrimental to a large, healthy growing phlox. If you take off the little plants that come at the outside of this and replant them you will find your flowers will be much larger the next year. If we leave bunches of phlox in the same place successive years they become small. If you separate them it will add vigor to your plant, and the flowers will do better. I would like to ask what success you have had with growing tritoma, the flame flower? Have you had any difficulty in raising them?
Mrs. Tillotson: I have one blossom that seemed to take such a long time to get above the ground I wondered what was the matter with it.
Mr. Hawkins: Mrs. Gould, can you give us any enlightenment?
Mrs. Gould: I never raised them, I got some bulbs this year. I know you have to take them up in the winter and store them like gladiolus, and they do not require very heavy soil.
Mrs. Countryman: Will yucca filamentosa ever blossom in a garden in St. Paul?
Mrs. Sawyer: It will, but it doesn't always. It does blossom in Minnesota, but I know that people have a great deal of difficulty getting blossoms.
Mrs. Countryman: I have five plants growing four years and have never seen a blossom yet.
Mr. Hawkins: I have had two growing three years, and I never have seen the color of a blossom yet.
A Member: What kind is that?
Mr. Hawkins: It is the yucca filamentosa. It is an evergreen. It should throw up a tall stalk with large branches and plenty of white flowers, I think hundreds of flowers—that is the description. It is a beautiful thing in the garden anyway.
Mrs. Countryman: I have seen them in blossom in California.
Mr. Richardson: I have seen them blossom many times in Winnebago.
Mrs. Countryman: Give us the culture instructions.
Mr. Richardson: I grew in nursery rows some odd stuff, had the same culture that the nursery had. But when it blossomed one year I have been told on good authority it would be five years before that stalk would blossom again, only blossoms once in five years, but by having many stalks they don't all blossom at the same time. I have had them two or three years in succession but not on the same stalk.
Mrs. Countryman: Do you cover them winters?
Mr. Richardson: Never.
Mr. Hawkins: I think the only reason why the yucca filamentosa doesn't do well is because it is a plant of the southwest and grows in a warmer climate.
Mrs. Sawyer: I had a varied experience in growing those plants, and I took a great deal of pains to learn all I could from different sources and different people, and I believe our trouble is our late frosts, I think that is conceded by people who have really gone into the question thoroughly. Our late frosts injure them more than anything else. A little protection in the spring is what they need more than protection in winter, and we know that they don't want a wet place.
Mr. Hawkins: I want to recommend a flower that should be very popular. It is perfectly hardy, blossoms for years, the hardy pyrethrum. It is a daisy-like flower, absolutely free from insects and a sure bloomer. We have plants in the garden that have bloomed six years. It comes in many shades, from white to deep crimson, blooms from the 15th of May to the 1st of July and makes a beautiful showing. In regard to iris, did any one have any trouble with their iris coming a little ahead of time last year and being frozen?
Mrs. Sawyer: I guess they all froze off. I don't think it was because they were ahead of time; it was because of the frost.
Mr. Hawkins: What would you recommend?
Mrs. Sawyer: I don't think there is anything to do in weather like last spring, you can't cover anything away from a hard black frost like that was.
G. C. Hawkins, of Minneapolis.
Mr. Hawkins: We have several hundred plants on a southern slope, and I thought perhaps the sun beating against the southern slope is what started them earlier.
Mrs. Sawyer: Ours weren't on a southern slope, pretty near level, rather north than anything else, and they got frozen.
A Member: What causes the rot in the iris?
Mr. Hawkins: That depends upon the kind of iris. With the bulbous rooted iris, the bulb is filled full of water during the heavy rains, and if you add more water to it it simply decays. The Siberian and many of the fibrous rooted iris will stand a great deal of water.
A Member: Does the German?
Mr. Hawkins: The German is a bulbous root. As I said, it takes all the moisture it needs. That is one reason why iris never wilts down in a dry spell. It always looks fresh and green.
A Member: I would like to say it is well not to plant the iris deep. The natural iris will lie almost on top of the ground, and they like to have the sun beat down on them. The iris likes to bask in the sun.
Mr. Hawkins: This would prove to you that the bulb takes enough water to support it and doesn't need any more because it rests on the top and basks in the sun. Has any one tried anything new in the garden that will stand our climate?
Mrs. Norton: I would suggest that hardy alum-root, or heuchera. It is a perfectly hardy perennial, can stand our worst winters without any covering, and it grows about so high from the ground (indicating two or three feet), with its geranium-like leaves, and the flower grows about three feet high, all covered with pink bells on the stems. It is a very decorative plant and perfectly hardy. I think it has been much neglected in the Northwest because it is so perfectly hardy and it increases very rapidly. I have over one hundred.
Mr. Hawkins: I would like Mrs. Gibbs to say a word.
Mrs. Gibbs: The only thing I can say is that I enjoy being around among other people's gardens. I think that is one of the best places to find out things that we want; so many times we buy something that sounds well, but when we have it planted it doesn't look as well. I think one of the best ways is to visit gardens and especially those that use labels.
A Member: I would like to ask about the trollius.
Mr. Hawkins: Has any one had experience in raising trollius?
Mrs. Gould: I have had experience in not raising them. I planted three years, and after getting the seeds from all the seedsmen I discovered in a book on plants that the seed would have to be in the ground two years in order to germinate. I didn't know that and left them in only a few months. I think the only way is to buy the plants. It is a very beautiful plant, yellow and shaped like golden glow, belongs to the same family as the buttercup.
A Member: I would like to ask about the hollyhocks. I saw such beautiful hollyhocks around Lake Minnetonka and I have never been able to make them winter. I would like to ask about that.
Mr. Hawkins: We have three plants, hollyhocks, digitalis and canterbury bells, and nearly all have the same trouble with them. If we mulch them we are liable to have the center decay and the plants practically useless. It is a question of mulching them too much or not mulching them. I would like to have you speak up and tell us your experience. I have in mind a gentleman who raises splendid hollyhocks in the neighborhood of the lakes. Takes no care of them, and yet he had one this year seventeen feet high, which took care of itself and had any amount of blossoms. I tried that experiment several years myself of mulching them, and the crown rotted. These are three of the best flowers of the garden, and we ought to have some certain way of keeping them.
A Member: Have you ever tried mulching them with corn stalks?
Mr. Hawkins: Yes, I have tried it but lost them.
A Member: I had very good luck with them that way.
A Member: It is more a question of drainage than of mulching.
Mr. Hawkins: That might be.
Mrs. Gould: I wish simply to say that the trouble with winter grown hollyhocks and canterbury bells is that they will head so tall and must be kept dry. I always cover the hollyhocks and if I had the others I think I would cover them. I uncover mine early in the spring, and if it gets cold put on a little more straw. You are almost sure to uncover them the wrong time. With foxgloves I think it is almost unnecessary to cover them.
Mr. Hawkins: In our gardens the hollyhocks form one of the best backgrounds we can have, beautiful, tall, stately stalks, and the canterbury bells, certainly nothing more beautiful than they. Then we come to the other, the digitalis, which is equally as beautiful. We must give our attention to the protection and growth of these in years to come because they are three of the beautiful things of the garden. It has been suggested that digitalis be potted and put inside the cold frame and leaves put over them. I think leaves are a splendid protection if you can keep them dry. If I were using them as a mulch I would keep out the water by covering with roofing paper to keep them dry.
Mrs. Countryman: I am told on good authority that the hollyhock is a true perennial and not a biennial.
Mrs. White: It is listed in the foreign catalogs as both a perennial and a biennial.
Mrs. Countryman: Wouldn't the hollyhock come under the heading of being perennial but not a permanent perennial?
Mr. Hawkins: It might be classed that way. There seems to be a difference of opinion as to just what it is. I have known them to come six or seven years in the same spot.
Tie Trap for Rabbits.—An inexpensive and permanent sewer tile trap for cottontail rabbits has proved very effective in Kansas. To make the trap, proceed as follows:
"Set a 12 by 6-inch 'T' sewer tile with the long end downward, and bury it so that the 6-inch opening at the side is below the surface of the ground. Connect two lengths of 6-inch sewer pipe horizontally with the side opening. Second grade or even broken tile will do. Cover the joints with soil so as to exclude light. Provide a tight removable cover, such as an old harrow disk, for the top of the large tile. The projecting end of the small tile is then surrounded with rocks, brush, or wood, so as to make the hole look inviting to rabbits and encourage them to frequent the den. Rabbits, of course, are free to go in or out of these dens, which should be constructed in promising spots on the farm and in the orchard. A trained dog will locate inhabited dens. The outlet is closed with a disk of wood on a stake, or the dog guards the opening. The cover is lifted and the rabbits captured by hand.
"These traps are especially suitable for open lands and prairies, where rabbits cannot find natural hiding places. They are permanent and cost nothing for repairs from year to year. If it is desired to poison rabbits, the baits may be placed inside these traps, out of the way of domestic animals or birds. This trap also furnishes an excellent means of obtaining rabbits for the table, or even for market."—U. S. Dept. of Agri.