The La Jara chronicle., 1906-02-23

College, was secured as Director of the
School Of Horticulture. The buildings
were soon erected, and the School es-
tablished as the first public Handicraft
School Of Hartford. Besides giving
apprentice work, and n course in hor-
| tculture and botany to the boys from
the Watkinson Farm School, the fol-
lowing season course In school gar
dening was established. This course
was opened to the boys and girls from
the city sc-ools.
The school garden work at the
School Of Horticulture proved attrac-
tive and popular from the first, and
after one or two years of free WORK
tuition was charged for each person
who took a garden. This tuition need
not keep any one from having a gar
den, as 100 hours Of work for tbs
School pays any boys tuition.
The school garden work has been
systematized, until now there is a nys
years' course IN school gardening for
boys and girls, as well a one to train
public school teachers and one coursc
for adults which is largely taken by
clergymen of the city.
One of the reasons which has mads
this work so popular is because of this
fact that the school shows results.
Every boy here, every person, for thas
matter, who has garden gets greaa
deal more in value from his garden
than the price of the tuition.
The first year the boys begin their
garden work the 1st of May. They
come out Cor n lesson one day a week
They come into the classroom, wheS
each boy receives a notebook, marks
his own attendance, keeps a weather
\ a tote
tion. or copies from the blackboard,
detailed lesson for that day. Witn
the seeds they are given, they thea
pass with the instructor to the tool
room, where each boy receives hin
tools, and with these he goes to hs
garden, where an instructor is always
pre-. ent to explain the things which hs
learns in the classroom. In going b
his garden he passes by the observe
ton plots. which are studied.
The second year the boys begin In
March, taking up the mixing of thu
soil, potting and repotting the tomato.
pepper, and egg plants that they havs
in their gardens.
The third year they begin in FebrU-
ary and take up roOt-grafting, cutting
pruning, spraying, digging and setting
trees, spading and caring for grounds.
MS wen as Ilh ltSSpuS-
The fourth year boys begin in jan
uary and take up the making of hot
beds, management of hotbeds, prun-
ing, spraying, soil analysis, plant
foods, testing seeds, planting the gar
den. besides the garden lessons. and
In the autumn they have budding.
fruit culture and asparagus culture.
The fifth year they take up system
attic study of the soil, beginning in
January. All gardens continue unt1
after the 1st of October
That the gardens pay is best shown
from record of the garden yields dur
Ing the past summer. A first year boy
got S966 worth, third year boy
$25.64, fourth year boy S23.o3, and
one of the clergymen S17.21 worth Of
produce in the gardens.
| The first year the gardens are u
< 80 it., the second year 10 40 n.
the third year 10 GO IT, the fourth
year 10 so IT. The clergymen hav1
gardens 10 40 IT. Public school
teachers have gardens 10 80 and 10
X 40 TT; the plan is to give them a
practical training in the method OF
training school children in the work.
| Already several schools of Hartford
have established gardens in connea.
ton with the schools, and the School
4
tors Of late; those that are giving In
struction We're trained at the School
Of Horticulture. But there is another
thing that the school does. 1t keeps
the children occupied during the sum-
mer months. keeping the boys and
girls Off the city streets: because they
come to love their gardens and come
out to work in them, and to work out
their tuition. This is not all, as soon
as the planting is done in the gar
dens the children take up the system,
attic study of weeds. they become IA
miliar with them and learn methods
Of destroying them. Also at the School
there are about 500 observation plot
containing many of our common
things, and the children learn to know
them in all stages of development
People are beginning to realize tha
boy from the School of Horticulturi
is better to work In their garden thar
the average man they can get, be
cause the boys will not pull up eI
pensive seedlings as the men so ofte1
do. Frequent calls are made upon Nj
Hep,enway for a boy to take care o
!: a garden or lawn, and many of tn
boys are able to spend most OF thei
spare time during the summer in tht
line of work.