Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-10-01
CITY GA R D { n | n c
Some Practical Hints for the
Fall Planting.
SECURE GOOD SOIL
GET READY NOW FOR SPRING
SURPRISES.
Hardy Plants and Bulbs Give Best Re-
turns to the
Amateur.

When the summer is over and the flowers
almost gone one would naturally suppose
that the time had come to put up the spade
and the rake and leave the garden to the
spiders and the sparrows until the awaken
ing of another spring But 1t is not so.
This is the time of all others in which to
make a garden or stock one already made
Hardy plants and bulbs, which are by all
means the most satisfactory for an anna
teur to grow, should be planted in October
or the early part of November, and a little
labor expended in the fall will yield large
returns the following season.
1t is truly wonderful how much pleasure
can be got from a little city garden, and
with what trifing expenditure of money and
time one be procured. Indeed, consid-
ering the ease of acquisition and The album
dance of reward, 1t seems most strange that
there should be any flowerless back yards.
For the making of garden space Is, of
course, the first consideration, but almost
every one is rich in this particular to the
extent of a lot the width and half the
length of his dwelling. surrounded doubtless
by tall board fence. and with this in spite
of the ash can and the weekly wash a
small paradise can be created. Do not
grow discouraged at the outset because
you cannot emulate your suburban friend
and poss a border seventy-five feet long.
When midsummering wedding comes you
will be thankful that yours is only fifteen.
After space the all-important requirement
is soil-good soil-and this is one Of .he
most difficult things to obtain. / have pur-
chased year after year cart loads Of rich,
black loam which almost invariably, after
a few days, developed ashy qualities and
ever afterward produced bits of broken
crockery and glass, together with thorns
and thistles and other vegetation indigenous
to the dump. Meanwhile, under the July
sun my plants were annually burning up
because I did not know that little lime
would break up the original red clay and
that deep soil was even more valuable
than a rich one. Dig, therefore, your gar
den bed at least eighteen inches or two
feet deep, and, if you have clay to deal wi; h,
mix in small quantity of lime and manure,
which will make it habitable to even the
most fastidious of the plant families, or, II
less yielding and you can afford IL and are
fortunate enough to know an honest gar
dener of the humber sort, NIL In the treneh
with new, light loan. The latter is, OF
course, the simpler and the quicker way,
as the former must be allowed 10 stand a
little while before planting. Fertilizers IF
caution, as many lavishly applied will burn
up rather than nourish the plants. This is
particularly true of new manure
Now What to PlantP
The bed made and the soil prepared, the
question comes, what to plant? with its
answer hidden in the bewindering. yet de-
fghtful, pages of the florists catalogues.
One who has never pored over these splen-
did works of fiction, making long purchas-
ing lists, which in the future are to be
ruthlessly cut down to fit a shallow purse.
and conjuring up visions of next season
forescence, has lost one of the choicest CT
lffe,s experiences. Some people will tell
you that all such catalogues are only de-
lusions and frauds, but my experience has
led me to believe otherwise There are. of
course, tricks in all trades, but K you go to
some well-established firm and order ju-
diciously you are pretty sure to find your
purchases as represented. Avoid novelties,