GARDENING WITH BRAINS HENRY T FINCK UfftARY SAN DIEGO c GARDENING WITH BRAINS by Henry T. Finck From left to rightLuther Burbank John Burroughs, Edith Simonds, and Henry T. Finck. GARDENING WITH BRAINS FIFTY YEARS' EXPERIENCES OF A HORTICULTURAL EPICURE BY HENRY T. FINCK Author of "FOOD AND FLAVOR" PUBLISHERS HARPER AND BROTHERS MCMXXII GARDENING WITH BRAINS COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARPER AND BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A-X DEDICATED TO EDWIN F. GAY AND SIMEON STRUNSKY CONTENTS PREFACE: BRAINS AND THE GARDEN MANIA xv CHAPTER I: A MOUNTAIN GARDEN IN MAINE 3 What Seeds to Buy 6 CHAPTER II: RAPID TRANSIT TO THE TABLE 9 How Corn Loses Its Sweetness .... 11 Tomatoes and Potatoes 13 CHAPTER III: WHAT VEGETABLES WE SHOULD GROW OURSELVES, AND WHY 15 Baby Cabbages and Senator Peas ... 17 Better Raw Than Cooked 18 The Spinach Problem Solved at Last . . 21 Increasing the Yield 24 Weeds and Hoes 25 Fragrant Luscious Melons 26 CHAPTER IV: FAVORITE GARDEN FLOWERS 30 Nasturtiums No Longer "Yellow Dogs" . 31 Let Fragrance Decide 36 Why Bulbs and Perennials? 38 Peonies and Perennial Phlox 41 Lilies, Irises, and Gladioli 45 The Most Alluring of the Annuals ... 49 viii CONTENTS 1? Page CHAPTER V: HOW TO START A GARDEN . 55 CHAPTER VI: BRAINS, BRAINS, AND MORE BRAINS 63 Technic of Gardening 64 Be a Gambler 66 Humus, Leaf Mold, and Fertilizers ... 67 Green Manuring 70 Getting Strength from Greens ..... 72 CHAPTER VII: WHEN VEGETABLES GET PNEUMONIA 74 Jack Frost Is Innocent 75 Protecting Fog 76 The Devilish Witch Grass 77 CHAPTER VIII: MALE versus FEMALE ASPARAGUS PLANTS 80 Wasting Energy on Berries 82 Makes Us Horribly Selfish 85 CHAPTER IX: ON THE WARPATH IN THE GARDEN 90 Rose Bugs and Grape Blossoms .... 91 Hosts of Garden Huns 93 Grasshoppers, Woodchucks, Crows, and Cats 94 CHAPTER X: LADYBIRDS, TOADS, AND CHICKENS 98 Toads, Yes Snakes, No 99 Chickens and the Garden 101 A Prohibition Rooster 104 CONTENTS ix Page CHAPTER XI: MORALS OF ELM TREES AND CUTWORMS 106 Tragedies in the Garden 108 Malicious Worms 109 Study the Anatomy of Roots 112 CHAPTER XII: DAILY MIRACLES IN THE GARDEN 115 The Intelligence of Plants 116 How Plants Utilize Dew 119 The Most Marvelous Thing in the World . 120 CHAPTER XIII: HOW TO BE HAPPY, RAIN OR SHINE 124 The Art of Transplanting 125 Effective Crop Insurance 127 Make Intensive Gardening Compulsory! . 129 CHAPTER XIV: A NEW TIME-TABLE FOR VEGETABLES 132 Stop the Loafing 134 Unstringing the Beans 135 Three Weeks' Potatoes 137 CHAPTER XV: AN OPIUM DREAM OF NEW POPPIES 140 Oriental, Darwin, and Silver Lining . . . 141 Burbank's Art Shirleys 145 How to Raise Fairy Poppies 147 x CONTENTS ' Page CHAPTER XVI: TWO THOUSAND ACRES OF SWEET PEAS 150 A Thousand New Varieties 152 The Australian Yarrawa 154 Cultural Directions 156 CHAPTER XVII: MODERN PANSIES AND THEIR CULTURE 158 Recent Improvements 159 Cats' Faces and Other Faces 160 Human Traits of Pansies 162 CHAPTER XVIII : GARDENERS WHO PAINT THE LILY 165 Wild-flower Gardens 166 The Shasta Daisy Was a Weed .... 167 Petunias and Dahlias 170 CHAPTER XIX: THE FRAGRANT SOUL OF FLOWERS 172 Fragrance Intoxicates, Like Music . . . 174 Educating the Sense of Smell 176 Natural Perfumes Best 178 A Symphony of Lily Perfumes .... 179 CHAPTER XX: ARE PIGS GENUINE EPI- CURES? 182 Clover-blossom Pork 183 A Maligned Philosopher 185 If All Were Epicures 187 * CONTENTS xi Page CHAPTER XXI: EDUCATED STRAWBER- RIES AND BURBANK PLUMS ... 189 John Burroughs Delighted 191 Burbank's New Plum Flavors 194 CHAPTER XXII: COMMERCIAL VALUE OF BURBANK'S NEW CREATIONS ... 197 A Bird's-eye View 200 Saving Space, Time, and Money .... 202 Bonfires and Moral Character 204 A Gardener of a New Kind 207 Cherries and Berries 212 Money Value of Improved Flowers . . 217 CHAPTER XXIII: JAPANESE BURBANKS AND MORNING-GLORIES 219 CHAPTER XXIV: MUST WE RAISE OUR OWN FRUITS, TOO? 222 Time May Swing Back 223 Peaches of Other Days 225 The Best Apples 229 CHAPTER XXV: DO APPLES KEEP THE DOCTOR AWAY? 232 The Fruit Cure 233 Another Burbank Triumph 234 xii CONTENTS ?? Page CHAPTER XXVI: WHY NOT GROW PA- PAWS, AMERICA'S MOST DELICIOUS FRUIT? 236 Strange Habits of a Queer Plant .... 238 Thinking It Over Six Months 239 The Tropical Papaya 242 CHAPTER XXVII: THE RETIRED RICH NEED NOT DIE 244 Have a Little Garden in Your Home . . 245 A Sporting Proposition 247 Healthy Plants Radiate Happiness ... 248 CHAPTER XXVIII: THE JOYS OF CRE- ATIVE GARDENING 251 Begging for Immediate Improvement . . 253 How We Improve on Nature 255 The Enemies of Great Men 257 The Truth About Spineless Cactus . . . 260 INDEX 267 WHY? WHY another book on gardening? You might as well ask, "Why write a historic novel when there are so many histories giving all the facts?" There are plenty of garden books giving all the facts for reference. But this book is for consecutive reading. The impor- tant facts are here, too, but sugar-coated with wise and witty remarks and spiced with anec- dotes and other things that suggest the per- fumed atmosphere of the garden and appeal to the garden maniac. The world's most famous gardener, Luther Burbank, wrote to the author of this book that its chapters are, in his opinion, "the best that have so far been written on garden subjects. You get at the facts in such a pleasing, human way that they are irresistible. Your articles suggest to me the difference between living, moving, growing plant life and the dead, dry, flat specimens which one sees in herbariums." PREFACE. BRAINS AND THE GARDEN MANIA "I AM densely ignorant only just barely know dahlias from mignonettes," wrote Henry James in May, 1898. But a few months later he declared, "The garden mania begins to stir in my veins." The garden mania! When that gets its grip on you, then good-by to golf and fishing and hunting and most other summer sports. You don't believe it? Just try and see. But you must use your brains as well as your brawn. Everybody has heard of the great English artist who, when asked what he mixed his paints with, replied, "I mix them with brains, sir." There is an old story about a poor widow who went to her pastor and complained that, al- though she prayed every day for a good crop, her garden refused to yield it. After inspecting her soil the pastor remarked : "My dear madam, prayer is the greatest thing in the world, but you must also use the brains the good Lord gave you. Your garden needs fertilizer." Cantaloupes, writes Robert Welles Ritchie in the Country Gentleman, "are not a cheap crop not a hit-and-miss crop. Brains, infinite patience, money, and then some more brains go into the rearing of it." The same is true of most other crops, useful or ornamental. If carried on with intelligence, gardening is a succession of delicious thrills. KV i PREFACE 1? Some drudgery there is, of course, and hard work aplenty; but remember what "The Eng- lish Plowman" says "It is not so tiresome to plow well, sir; the mind is interested." I can- not imagine anyone being ever bored in a garden which is well cultivated. That every man or woman who reads this book has brains inherited or acquired is sure. There is one thing, however, we cannot inherit experience; that must be acquired, which is lucky for us fellows who write books. The process of acquiring experience can be greatly accelerated by reading about the adventures, successes, and failures of others. My own experiences, as recorded in this entirely informal and chatty volume, cover more than fifty years. They began in Oregon, when I was a boy (James Vick of Rochester, New York, was at that time, I believe, the only mail-order seedsman in the country and now look at the multitude of them and their enor- mous business!), and will, I hope, continue many more summers; for I consider life worth living. Nothing, certainly, makes it more so than the daily garden thrills for five months every year, and the healthful exhilaration that gardening brings. "How much better you are looking!" I said to a friend last May. "Yes," he replied. "I began my gardening three weeks ago." < PREFACE xvii Of course I too have benefited by the experi- ences and advice of other gardeners, amateur as well as professional, having for about three decades read and reviewed all the new garden books for the New York Evening Post. It was in the Evening Post with which I have had the honor of being connected forty years as musical and epicurean editor that fifteen of the chapters in this book about my garden in Maine first appeared. It was Mr. Simeon Strunsky, leading edi- torial writer on that paper, who suggested this exploiting of my horticultural experiences. To him, and to the president of the Evening Post company, Mr. Edwin F. Gay, who has kindly allowed their reproduction in book form, I have dedicated this ^volume. I also wish to thank Good Housekeeping and the editor of House and Garden, Mr. Richardson Wright, for permission to reprint articles con- tained in this book. Chapters I, II, III, IV, XXII, and XXVIII have not heretofore ap- peared in print. I may be permitted to add that while these chapters appeared in the press I received many letters from all over the coun- try expressing the hope that they would be conveniently reproduced between the covers of a book. Am I vain in consequence? An uncle of mine, Charles Black, used to say, "Whoso bloweth not his own horn the same shall not be blown.*' xviii PREFACE fc Have I not reason to be stuck up when the foremost gardener in the whole world, Luther Burbank, wrote me, after reading some of the chapters, that, quite apart from what I have written about his work, which he pronounces "very accurate," the chapters in this book are, in his opinion, "the best that have so far been written on garden subjects." Inasmuch as I wrote this book for men and women who have brains and know how to use them, I have devoted a considerable number of pages to the gardening of the future as exemplified by the activity of Mr. Burbank, Henry Eckford, and other plant breeders who are beautifying our flowers and making our garden vegetables more palatable. I have done this, partly, in the hope that those of my readers who have the necessary means and leisure will help to promote what might be called these plant eugenics. Let no one think for a moment that there is not a great deal more to do. In view of the simply amazing amelioration of most garden plants since the day when our parents were young, I have expressed the opinion (in the chapter on "Favorite Garden Flowers") that it seems almost impossible still further to improve them, except in fragrance and flavor, but Mr. Burbank takes a much more sanguine view. In a letter to me dated September 8, 1921, he wrote : PREFACE xix The flower improvers have still a whole universe in improving them not only as to fragrance, but in ten thousand other ways not imagined by any ordinary florist. Twenty years ago the carnation was thought to be as nearly perfect as it could be made. On a visit to Long Island I told Mr. Charles W. Ward a simple thing which I had discovered regarding the carnation, and he told me, before he died here in California, many times that he made considerably over half a million dollars out of the carnation from my plan, as he used to say, "before the other fellows got on to it." Fragrance, of course, is lacking in many flowers, though I have added it to the calla, verbena, and dahlia, and intensified it in practically all the flowers with which I have worked. Besides fragrance we must have flowers of a more uniform growth and color, new combinations of shades, hardier ones, those which bloom longer in the season, those which remain fresh longer after cut- ting or on the plant, and so many other things that are totally inconceivable to the ordinary person that it is not necessary to mention them. There are two kinds of books on gardening. The more numerous kind is for reference rather than for reading, giving useful hints according to a regular scheme. The other kind is exempli- fied by Charles Dudley Warner's My Summer in a Garden, which, while entertaining to all who love gardens, gives very little useful infor- mation. I have tried to combine the two kinds to give a great deal of horticultural up-to- the-minute information, but in a readable fashion. It is for the readers to decide whether I have succeeded. I hope the book will fall xx PREFACE * into the hands of many who know little about gardening as a sport and a thrill factory; for one of my main objects is to mobilize new recruits and multiply the number of garden maniacs. GARDENING WITH BRAINS CHAPTER I. A MOUNTAIN GAR- DEN IN MAINE MAINE is the only state in the Union where sugar cane cannot be raised. It grows there only a few feet high and the sap isn't sweet. If all our cane sugar had to be raised in Maine it would cost about a thou- sand dollars a pound. Maine corn, on the other hand, is the sweetest corn raised in this country or anywhere. Most of the canned corn in the market pretends to come from that state, or is labeled "Maine Style." That tells the whole story. A strange paradox for corn is a hot-climate plant quite as much as is sugar cane. The two plants are cousins, and at a distance look almost alike. How do I explain this paradox? I don't try to explain it; I simply state it as a curious fact. I tried sugar cane once, and never again. But corn sweet corn has the place of honor in my vegetable garden, which is situated in Oxford County, near the picturesquely located village of Bethel. Mount Washington and the rest of the Presi- dential Range of the White Mountains are in full sight, less than twenty miles to the south- west. At the time we start our garden, early in May, Washington and its neighbors, Jefferson and Madison in particular, are still clad occasion- 4 GARDENING WITH BRAINS ally in robes of snow reaching down almost to their feet, and chill breezes come to our garden from them. On the other side are the mountains of Maine, the highest of which, Speckle (silly name!) which has recently been proved to be a little higher than the better-known Katahdin is even nearer to us than Mount Washington; not so near, fortunately, as to inflict on us the July and August frosts which sometimes ruin the crops of the farmers who dwell near its foot. But we have had frosts the third week in June and before the end of August; and in twenty summers up here I have never known the first autumn frost to hold off later than September 21st. My object in giving these details is to justify the title of my book, Gardening With Brains. By using such brains as have been placed at my disposal I have been able to succeed wonderfully with my flower and vegetable beds, without a single failure in twenty summers, despite dis- couraging frosts and droughts; for this region is not usually blessed with sufficient spring rains, and there are awfully hot days in summer. In 1920 the summer of perpetual rain south of Maine we had seven weeks of drought; and one week, when New-Yorkers were quite com- fortable, we had 98 to 100 in the shade, day after day. The days are longer here, too; but the extra 1? A MOUNTAIN GARDEN 5 hours of sunlight, I need not say, accelerate the growth of garden plants and give the corn and peas and other vegetables such succulence and richness of flavor as you will not easily find elsewhere. If my way of gardening original in some details and unconventional on the whole has given such satisfaction on a knoll exposed to fierce mountain blasts and the other disadvan- tages referred to, it surely cannot fail in gardens more favorably located. But, no matter how well situated and cli- matically favored your garden may be, you will have to have your wits about you, looking ahead all the time. With all my alleged brains, and after a gar- dening experience of over half a century, I made a stupid blunder in the summer of 1920, which taught me a lesson for the next half century. (I mean almost literally what I say, for my gardening has done such wonders for my health that at sixty-seven I feel like thirty- seven in every way, and I fully expect to reach the age of one hundred.) In that summer there was a nation-wide express strike, and freight moved not much faster than a glacier. By delaying to order my seed potatoes till I thought it would be safe to ship them north, I had to pay nine dollars a bushel for what I could get, but some of the fancy extra varieties I wanted to plant could 6 GARDENING WITH BRAINS ^ not be obtained even at that price. Nor could I get all the fertilizer I wanted in time. WHAT SEEDS TO BUY The brainy thing to do is to order in January everything you may need in your garden the next April, May, or June. This includes seeds of all kinds. The seedsmen usually send out their catalogues in January. As soon as you get yours and it is wise to have several, from reputable firms like Burbank, Burpee, Vaughan, Dreer, Vick, Thorburn, Henderson, Salzer, etc., which are all free make out lists of what you want and mail them. Most people wait till spring, with the result that seedsmen are swamped with orders and find it impossible to supply all their customers at the "psycho- logical moment," which means the difference between a whole season's success or failure. Think the matter over, act promptly, and you won't find yourself wringing your hands some day in April or May and wishing you had had your seeds in the ground "in time for this glorious rain." A drought may follow that rain and prevent you from getting your seeds started for several weeks. I see that sort of thing happen nearly every year in neighboring gardens. Use your wits, too, in the matter of govern- ment seeds. Your Congressman will send you, of his own accord or by request, packets of *$ A MOUNTAIN GARDEN 7 vegetable and flower seeds. They are free, but you do not know who raised them or whether they are not too old to germinate; and you surely do not wish to bestow your time and labor on a garden for two or three months and then find to your disgust that your flowers are commonplace and your vegetables tough and insipid. Government seeds may be good, and doubtless they are sometimes; but you lose confidence in them when you find out something about this political business of free seed distribution. Here is an enlightening paragraph from the New York Evening Post: Do our farmers' associations, "resolving" about rail- road rates, know that when the question of the annual appropriation for the distribution of seeds came up this costly year (1920) one of the thirty-odd Congressmen wanted once more to shift this job to the Agricultural Department, where it logically belongs, but a bipartisan majority voted $359,980 (50 per cent more than last year) to keep this graft in the hands of the grafters? This was done secretly in committee of the whole, because no man dared to have his vote recorded. You must have miraculous faith in human nature if you think that seeds bought and dis- tributed under such political conditions are worth planting. To be sure, they may be good, but, as I have said, you haven't the faintest idea who grew them or how old they are (and some seeds do not germinate after the second 8 GARDENING WITH BRAINS * year). In midsummer and autumn, when you compare your free-seed plants with those of a neighbor who bought his of a reputable seeds- man, you will be likely to make sorrowful comparisons. One September, after I had been eating Bur- bank & Chalk's Early Jewel tomatoes for several weeks, a farmer's wife showed me a row of tomato plants (started very early in a cold frame) which had green, half-grown fruit on their vines, none of which could possibly ripen before frost. She had received them from a Congressman, who should have known that that variety could not mature in Maine. A dime spent on the right seeds would have given her bushels of ripe tomatoes. CHAPTER II. RAPID TRANSIT TO THE TABLE TIME was when people used to debate the favorite topic whether the city or the country offered the greater advantages and pleasures. Doubtless such discussions are still in vogue, but at present the ambition of those most interested is to combine the advantages, in what are called garden cities the cities of the future. In these garden cities, of which England and Germany have so far provided the best examples, laborers with modest incomes, no less than the well-to-do, can dwell in clean, roomy houses, breathe fresh air, raise their own flowers and vegetables, and live like epicures. To be able to dwell in such a civic garden altogether is indeed a privilege. For those who cannot do so there are various expedients, the most tempting of which is the allotment gardening which had become so popular in some German cities, notably Dresden, before the war. There anybody could for a small sum rent a lot, from twenty to fifty feet square, on the edge of the town, where those whose occupa- tion kept them indoors could go with their fami- lies in the evenings and on holidays. Each garden was surrounded by a vine-covered fence, and there was a padlocked gate to which the owner alone had a key. Some of the larger lots contained 10 GARDENING WITH BRAINS fruit trees, while in the smallest there was room for peas and beans, or potatoes, carrots, straw- berries, and other table luxuries and necessaries. As Consul Tredwell justly remarked, "this sub- stitution of fresh vegetables for the cheaper varieties of store food is of primary importance to the health of a congested community." If city folk fully realized the gain in health and pleasure that would result from eating "home-made" vegetables in place of the gro- cer's usually wilted wares, the building of garden cities would be accelerated with a rush, and vegetarianism would suddenly become so popular that meat prices would tumble down all in a heap, so that every consumer would be happy. Under present conditions the only opportunity the average citizen has to find out what a treat it is to eat vegetables fresh from the garden is in vacation time, at a farmhouse. Compara- tively few, however, board with farmers, and many farmers, moreover, do not know how to raise the best vegetables, nor their wives how to cook them in the most savory ways. As for the rural inns and hotels, it is surprising how many of them get their vegetables in cans from the cities; and while canned goods of all kinds have undoubtedly improved greatly within the last few years, and are now, perhaps, as desir- able as most of those sold as "fresh" in the cities, they are no more to be compared with 8 TABLE RAPID TRANSIT 11 those just out of the garden than cold-storage fish with trout just out of the water. The best trout I ever ate were three that I caught one summer in Yellowstone Park, and then promptly killed and cooked without taking them off the hook. One I boiled, another was steamed, the third baked on a hot stone. The boiling water, the steam, and the hot stone were those of a geyser on the edge of a cool stream. If you think this is a "fish story" let me recall the fact that General Grant performed a similar feat on a geyser cone in Yellowstone Park. HOW CORN LOSES ITS SWEETNESS A cooking cone like that would be a fine thing to have in your garden, for really you cannot get your own peas and pod beans, your young carrots and beets, and above all your corncobs, into the pot too soon. It is only from our own garden, says a writer in the Country Gentle- man, that sweet corn can be depended on to be at its best, as it loses its sugary content soon after pulling. "It has been proved that at the end of twenty-four hours following pulling, 30 per cent of the sugar will have disappeared, and in the next twenty-four hours about 25 per cent. This leaves precious little sweetness in our sweet corn if it has been kept for two days." Yet that is the condition in which most of the corn is eaten in our cities! 12 GARDENING WITH BRAINS *$ "The water should be boiling ere the corn is pulled," is a good old maxim which we follow scrupulously. We have also made our jarred Golden Bantam (as improved by Burbank) a feast for epicures by canning it when it is as young and milky as when it is eaten directly from the cob. We score the rows of kernels with a sharp knife and scrape out the juice and tender meat, leaving all the husks on the ear. You ought to see the expression on the face of our visitors when for the first time they taste it. Corn like that ought to bring five times as much as the dry, flavorless, husky stuff usually sold in cans. We city folk consider ourselves wondrous wise in having made arrangements that enable us to have "fresh" vegetables, berries, and fruits all the year round. But after a long transit from the South they are no longer fresh. Far better is it to wait till they are "in season" in our own latitude. The first strawberries in our markets are small, sour, flavorless; yet thousands gobble them up eagerly, thus taking off the edge of the season's appetite; and when, a little later, the luscious, sun-ripened, fragrant berries of near- by gardens arrive, these same persons miss the virgin joy of eating the superior product. Epicures, whose chief concern is superior flavor (not only because they enjoy it, but because they know that it stimulates their *8? TABLE RAPID TRANSIT 13 digestive glands and is good for their health in general), wait till they are sure of it, knowing that long-distance berries, fruits, and vegetables are about as enjoyable as telephoned kisses. The disadvantages of long-distance marketing are being gradually diminished by superior shipping, precooling, and chilling arrangements; but nothing will ever take the place of vege- tables and berries gathered from your own garden an hour before they are eaten. TOMATOES AND POTATOES "I would go to the country to live, if for nothing else, to find out what corn, peas, and beans can be at their best," exclaims E. P. Powell. He might have added tomatoes. It is true that these do not spoil so rapidly, yet their freshness is, from the epicurean point of view, of far greater importance than is com- monly supposed. Unfortunately they can be picked when hard and green, and allowed to redden gradually. Most of those sold in the cities, even when grown in the neighborhood, are now of that kind. Though they redden, they do not really ripen, remaining tough till they spoil, at no time fit for anything but a stew. To enjoy them in a salad, or eaten out of the hand, we must have them fresh from the gar- den. The difference is astounding. Only a fresh tomato has the peculiar flavor suggested by the fragrance of the plant itself when you 2 14 GARDENING WITH BRAINS 2 gently crush a leaf. Such a tomato is as superior to the city grocer's as a fragrant Havana is to a five-cent cigar. Fortunately the most useful of all vegetables, the potato, does not need to be transferred at once from the garden to the kitchen. Yet it deteriorates sooner than is commonly sup- posed. Once in the Yosemite Valley I ate one which I was assured was a year old, yet it was still mealy and of a fine flavor; but that was an exception. Most potatoes cease to be at their best when five or six months old. In July, August, September, October, November, a new baked potato, with salt and fresh butter, makes a delicious meal in itself a specific for persons who wish to gain weight; but after Christmas I have no use for the year's crop. The tubers gradually lose flavor and become soggy and indigestible; and as sprouting time approaches they become injurious to health also, because of the development in them of a poisonous prin- ciple common to plants of the same family. We welcome the Bermudas which come into the market ere winter is over, but the early varieties are usually shipped before they are mealy or have much flavor. The plain truth is that there are several months every year during which we ought to give up potatoes altogether, using in their place macaroni, boiled chestnuts, rice, fried hominy, or divers other dishes that appeal to vegetarians or else go well with meat. CHAPTER III. WHAT VEGE- TABLES WE SHOULD GROW OURSELVES, AND WHY WHEN I planned my first trip to Switzerland the first thing I did was, of course, to buy a Baedeker. Of all guide books ever printed, that was undoubtedly the best. It covered every mountain, vil- lage, road, and cow path ; gave the prices of all the hotels and wayside inns, with an estimate of their degree of excellence; and the hundreds of glorious viewpoints were one and all described so eloquently and yet discriminatingly that I was completely at a loss what to do. It was impossible to see everything in a few short sum- mer months. What was I to prefer? Fortu- nately, some friends who had been everywhere in the Alps made out a route for me which the subsequent experience of ten summers in Switzerland showed to have been just right. Readers of this book who are planning their first garden and my principal object is to persuade as many as possible to grow their own vegetables and flowers will do well to seek similar advice from friends or neighbors who have had gardening experience and know what can be grown best in your county. The catalogues of the great seed growers are as elaborate and as puzzling as a Baedeker. When you first look them over you mark something 16 GARDENING WITH BRAINS *$ on nearly every page that you surely must have in your virgin garden. But beware! The mistake of mistakes is to plant more than you can take care of, to bite off more than you can chew. Remember that plants have to be wa- tered and cultivated frequently, and seed pods clipped every day or two, to insure large, healthy blossoms and prolong the bloom. A pansy or poppy bed five feet long and well groomed will give you infinitely more pleasure than a neglected bed five times as big. As regards vegetables, unless you have lots of time and plenty of help, it is advisable to grow only those you cannot buy reasonably and in prime condition. There is no special reason for raising your own potatoes, for exam- ple, or beans for the winter, or eggplants, or cabbages, or turnips, or oyster plants, or pump- kins. Every farmer grows most of these; you can buy them in any city or country store, and the grocers cannot spoil them, as they do the peas and beans and lettuces and corn and car- rots and beets and spinach and asparagus, by exposing them for hours and even days to the desiccating sun. It is these succulent varieties, including also okra, summer squashes, cucum- bers, and tomatoes, that you should specialize in. Cucumbers, by the way, while taboo to many, become as digestible as squashes if cooked. They are delicious creamed. Celery, oyster plants, parsnips, eggplants, onions, you can buy K WHAT VEGETABLES 17 at the grocer's; but radishes, if you want them crisp and just the right age, should be raised in your own garden a new planting every two or three weeks. They come up in a few days and are the easiest to grow of all vegetables. Noth- ing could be more piquant than the little "red buttons" and scarlet globes and French break- fast radishes. The only trouble is they get pithy and stale so soon. Far less troublesome in this way is the long white Icicle; it is as crisp and tender and well flavored as the reds, and keeps in good condition much longer. Still, it is at its best when young and slender. Many people think they cannot digest radishes, but they are usually mistaken. When thor- oughly chewed I have never yet known them to disagree with anybody. They are also not bad creamed, a fact which few know. BABY CABBAGES AND SENATOR PEAS When these chapters were appearing in peri- odicals I received many letters from all parts of the world patting me on the back or offering suggestions. One of the most interesting of these came from a naval architect and engineer, J. Beavor Webb, who related his experience with cabbages near Southampton in England. He raised them, from seed to table, in six to seven weeks. He followed the usual course in starting the seed in a frame and transplanting, but what his plants specially benefited by was 18 GARDENING WITH BRAINS liquid manure from a near-by horse stable, which he diluted and used on them continually. The variety of cabbage used was Sutton's Early, or Jersey Wakefield. He did not let his plants reach maturity, but cutthem young. "These cabbages," he adds, "were entirely different in flavor from those grown in the ordinary manner. Even in Smithtown, Long Island, where I subsequently raised them, they used to talk of my baby cab- bages, and said they were the best they ever ate." Baby cabbages, no doubt, would agree with many who cannot eat of the full-grown heads. The chief trouble is the method of cooking. Cabbage should be steamed instead of boiled. Boiled cabbage is vary" indigestible, sometimes deadly. Steaming is also the best way to cook potatoes, peas, carrots, etc. for three reasons: (1) They are more digestible than when boiled; (2) Their flavor is richer; and (3) The mineral salts, so important a factor in food, are saved. It is too bad that the habit of serving cabbage raw, as cold slaw, has gone out, for cabbage is far more digestible raw than cooked. Better in flavor, too. So are peas and carrots and corn and turnips and tomatoes and as I only just discovered accidentally asparagus tips. BETTER RAW THAN COOKED The eating of these vegetables raw should be encouraged, for cooking often destroys the " vitamines " which abound in them and which * WHAT VEGETABLES 19 are so essential to our growth and maintenance of health. Here, indeed, we find one of the strongest arguments for having our own garden. I wish you could see the eagerness with which my neighbor's children pluck and eat raw young carrots. Paul told me he once ate fourteen, and all three of them are as healthy as if they ate nothing but " vitamines," or mineral salts. I am often amused at the amazement with which people stare at me when I tell them what vegetables I eat raw they couldn't look more surprised if I were a giraffe with two necks, or something of that sort. Simply because I add corn and peas and carrots and turnips and asparagus to the things they eat raw, including radishes, lettuce, melons, tomatoes, cabbage, celery, onions, cucumbers, and forty kinds of fruits and berries. My little nephew, after eating one ear of corn uncooked, always insisted on having his cobs raw, because he found them sweeter than the boiled or roasted ears; and when I taught him to eat peas right from the vine he exclaimed, enthusiastically, "Uncle, I don't want mine cooked any more!" Most people prefer beef to veal; but in the vegetable garden we want the veal, the young plants, every time. Baby pod beans are a million times better than the huge, dry, full- grown pods which alone our greengrocers offer for sale. Hence you should raise your own pod beans. Plant only the stringless kind. Pole 20 GARDENING WITH BRAINS "S? beans yield longest. If any of your beans get over three inches long leave them to grow to full size and eat them without the pods, as shell beans. Baby peas are more expensive than the full- grown because it takes so many more of them to make a quart, but how much more tender and flavory they are! Few people seem to have ever had all the young peas they wanted to eat. When I wrote to a wealthy friend of mine regarding a dinner my family had just eaten, he wrote back: "It makes me gasp to think of your eating three quarts of shelled peas. Didn't you suffer from shell shock?" I haven't spoken to him since. There's a limit. When Luther Burbank was asked for a new kind of peas, small as the Parisian pet its pois and all ripening at once so they could be har- vested by machinery (for canning), he provided them in a few years. For these peas I have, of course, no use. In a family garden we want peas which will not all ripen at once, so we can have half a dozen pickings from the same row. The Senators, unless killed by drought, will keep on blooming and yielding pods for weeks. Another way to prolong the season is to plant different kinds. Some ripen in two months; others require three. Late peas should be planted early, too as early as the ground can be worked. Emphasis is placed by seedsmen on the fact that the wrinkled peas which are sweeter than the smooth kinds are apt to rot 1? WHAT VEGETABLES 21 if put in while the soil is still cold and wet; but in light, sandy soil the danger is not great. In any soil, take the risk. Peas are cranky; they can stand hot weather only if their roots can go way down where the soil is cool and damp. If you can thoroughly soak these roots twice a week in dry weather, you need not worry about the crop. In regions where August is apt to be cooler and rainier than June and July, a July sowing of early varieties often gives gratifying results. THE SPINACH PROBLEM SOLVED AT LAST Too many Americans say they do not like carrots and beets. They don't know what they are talking about; for when the right kinds, baby size, are placed before them they say, "Yum-yum!" and ask for more. Try the Parisian forcing carrots. They are always "small, but, oh my!" As for beets, look not upon them with favor when they are red, but .. plant the light-pink and whitish gassano variety, |/ which is not only sweeter and tenderer, but~ ' remains edible longer than the reds. Sweeter still are the sugar beets. There is a general impression that these are good only for making sugar or feeding cattle, and most of the seedsmen, who ought to know better, do not offer them at all among the vegetables intended for the table. Try the white Wanzleben sort and you will find it, when youngTas tender as the Bassano, 22 GARDENING WITH BRAINS and even sweeter. The first time we had them my seven-year-old nephew exclaimed, joyously, "Uncle, let's have only this kind next summer." Of all vegetables, carrots and spinach are the most valuable because of their extraordinary richness in mineral salts. Carrots are easy to raise if you remember that they are slow to germinate. In dry weather, therefore, cover the seed beds till the plants are up. Spinach has a most aggravating habit of going to seed as soon as the weather gets hot. Many a time have I been fooled by optimistic seedsmen who dreamed they had discovered a summer-proof variety, and finally I swore off on home-made spinach plants. But in 1920, being a good deal of an optimist myself, I tried a novelty featured by Vaughan, called "Ant- vorskov." We found it equal in flavor to any spinach we had ever eaten and a garden miracle! it was not only "slower to run to seed than any other sort," but some of the plants, which I left on purpose, did not shoot up after being in the ground four months! The spinach problem is solved ! If you think you don't care, because you do not like spinach, anyway, try it the French way, chopped fine, mixed with a big lump of fresh butter, and a poached egg dropped on it. Some other vegetables that belong in every garden notably corn and lettuce are referred to in other chapters of this book (see Index), with * WHAT VEGETABLES 23 mention of the best varieties to grow in the home garden. Of most vegetables the large seed cata- logues offer a bewildering variety. I like Burpee's way of marking with a O the sorts he considers best; also, Vaughan's way of charging an extra price for his choicest seeds, marked "special." As I am not writing a horticultural dictionary or a book of reference, I cannot dwell on all the vegetables which epicures may desire in their home gardens and their culture. To all who want a helpful guide I cannot too highly recom- mend a volume published by the Macmillan Co., The Book of Vegetables and Garden Herbs, by Allen French. Get it, by all means; you will consult it daily during the sowing season; I do so myself, after half a century's gardening experience, to refresh my memory. The plan of the book is remarkably practical. All the vegetables, including many that are little known but desirable, are considered in alphabetical order, from agrimony and artichoke to yam and zitkwa, and at the end there is a table of seed longevity and ounce values. Each vegetable is considered from every important point of view. Under "Onion," for example, there are these subheads: "General Informa- tion," "Soil," "Distances," "Depth to Plant," "Thinning," "Transplanting," "Culture," "Fer- tilizer," "Harvesting," "Storage," "The 'New* Onion Culture," "Diseases," "Pests." To have this book on your shelf is like having at hand an 24 GARDENING WITH BRAINS experienced gardener, ready to answer all your questions promptly. Some other good books will be referred to later on. INCREASING THE YIELD Mr. French does not claim too much when he says that the information brought together in his book from many sources "is enough to increase by half the yield of many a garden" which illustrates the importance of brains in rais- ing vegetables. Here is a sample of his wisdom : A still better method of hand sowing consists in making the drill deeper than directed, scattering along it some good chemical fertilizer, rich in nitrogen, and covering this with earth before sowing the seed, which direct contact with the chemical would injure. The fertilizer, thus placed, gives the plant the much-desired quick start, with a supply of food for later growth. Whatever seeds you sow, try to give them this quick start by using the kind of fertilizer or manure indicated in Mr. French's book. Such a start is of superlative importance because of our hot summers and possible frosts in Sep- tember. Take corn, for instance. To give it "the 'pep' and vigor so necessary to win the race with the weeds, weather, and especially that wary contestant, Jack Frost," as L. F. Graber remarks, it must have some quickly avail- able commercial fertilizer from the very start, well mixed with the soil. (Bone meal and muri- ate of potash are particularly good; or you can use a little powdered hen manure or commercial 8? WHAT VEGETABLES 25 sheep manure in each "hill.") Mr. Graber tells of a test case where a fertilized part of a field was, after six weeks, a foot and a half higher than the unfertilized corner and yielded more at the rate of over twenty bushels an acre! WEEDS AND HOES An early start will, however, do little good if weeds are allowed to rob your crop of this fertilizer. At the Illinois Experiment Station we read that "with a well-prepared seed bed where weeds were allowed to grow with corn the aver- age yield for an eight-year period was only 7.3 bushels an acre, compared with 45.9 bushels where the weeds were scraped off with a sharp hoe." "Scraped off" focus your attention on those two words. If weeds are scraped off several times a year, soon after a rain, they can do no harm and you will in one hour do a job that after the weeds are big and deeply rooted will take you five hours, not to speak of the harm you will do your vegetables by partly uprooting them, too. Hoeing is always hard work, but think of the glorious appetite it gives! I generally appease mine, so far as breakfast is concerned, right in the garden. (I work two or three hours before breakfast.) A raw yellow turnip, a small raw carrot or two, the peas in half a dozen or more pods, a radish, and a tomato right off the vine make a feast for the gods sweet, juicy, rich in vitamines as no cooked food ever is. Really, 26 GARDENING WITH BRAINS ^ you must have your own garden! Sweet corn, too, is let me say it again more sweet and flavorsome raw than cooked that is, if eaten at once. Still, I should hate to give up the boiled or roasted corn with sweet butter and salt. And shall I tell you something something that will make you as happy as a stick of candy did when you were a little boy or girl? You have, of course (when nobody was look- ing), after biting the kernels off an ear of corn, taken the cob between your teeth, closed your lips tightly on it, and sucked and sucked and sucked. Sugar cane isn't sweeter, nor is maple sap. But what I think you do not know is that the flavor of no two cobs is exactly alike. I made sure of this years ago. We usually can about one hundred and fifty ears at once, and when the corn has been cut off and the cobs put into tin pails for the pigs, I get ahead of them by sucking two or three dozens of the cobs. It's "linked sweetness long drawn out," I assure you, and the subtle nuances in the flavor are astonishing. 1 FRAGRANT LUSCIOUS MELONS Sweeter than the sweetest corn, raw or cooked, is the melon, particularly the canta- 1 Plant breeders, professional or amateur, could and should improve the flavor of the best corn by studying these nuances, and selecting for the next crop those ears which are sweetest. This can be easily done by putting a numbered tag on each ear you suck and a tag with the same number on the second ear on the same stalk. ^ WHAT VEGETABLES 27 loupe, and this is always eaten raw, although I have read that in southern France some kinds are made into jam or preserved. Successful melon raising is, unfortunately, possible, as a rule, only where the summers are too warm for our own comfort, for they demand warm nights. So luscious, however, are they that I try them every year in my Maine mountain garden, and once in a while I succeed fairly well. I wouldn't waste time on them in such an unfavorable locality if it were possible to buy the best kinds. Those sold in city markets and peddled in the country are always a lottery; in a dozen you are lucky if you find two or three that delight the nose and the palate. In restaurants they are usually served iced, which destroys what little flavor they had. One is more likely to have luck with the Honeydew melon, which is as fragrant as a peony unless it is picked and sold before it has ripened on the vine, which is too often the case. Never buy or gather a cantaloupe unless it is quite fragrant; the riper it is, the richer the perfume. Melons are such a lure to my epicurean soul that I sometimes think it is foolish to spend my summers in our coldest state, where I cannot raise them. However, I have a strong imagina- tion and an enviable faculty for remembering sense impressions and gastronomic treats, so that I get considerable pleasure from just reading about melons. Particularly in that 28 GARDENING WITH BRAINS *$ wonderful ten-dollar book of eight hundred pages called The Vegetable Garden (E. P. Button 85 Co.). It is translated from the French of the famous specialist, Vilmorin- Andrieux, with additional pages on English and American varieties by W. P. Thomson. To the melon thirty pages are given, and when I read, e.g., regarding the Persian melon, that the flesh is very thick, that it is almost without any rind and almost entirely filling the fruit, rather firm, but "very finely flavored, juicy, sweet, and highly perfumed," and that in that country there is a great number of varieties of melons of which "travelers speak in terms of admiration," I want to buy a ticket for Persia immediately. One must look over the pages of that huge volume to realize that vegetable eating, in our own country, is still in its infancy. We think we know something about potatoes, for instance; but read the fifty pages devoted to them by M. Vilmorin-Andrieux and you will realize what an amazing variety of these tubers we have yet to sample and enjoy. Let the French teach us about them; teach us also how to cook them and other vegetables as only the French can cook them; teach us, furthermore, to insist on our rights. "In Paris," as Mr. Robinson writes, "the cook has the upper hand, and no grower dare send him the wooden fiber which is so largely sent as vegetables to the London * WHAT VEGETABLES 29 market." No doubt in a few generations Lon- don, and our own cities, will catch up with Paris. In the meantime let us raise vegetables in our own gardens and cook them the French way. Or dress them the French way when you grow lettuce, romaine or other salad plants. Of these I shall speak in a later chapter. I regret to say that little progress has been made in the appreciation, in this country, of the best of all salad plants escarole since I made a passionate plea of several pages for it in my Food and Flavor. In the restaurants there has, however, been a tremendous and gratifying increase in the demand for salads for both lunch and dinner. Greens are full to the brim of vitamines (think of the cattle and horses which gain all their strength from grass!); and these vitamines (probably simply mineral salts) seem to pass, like fruit juices, right into the blood and do their work at once. Greens with fruit will be the lunch of the future, in town as well as country. CHAPTER IV. FAVORITE GAR- DEN FLOWERS IN ye olden days it was customary to grow some of the flowers in the vegetable garden. I have adopted this custom. Not that a well-groomed vegetable garden needs any floral ornaments. What could be more decorative than the flowers of a row of scarlet-runner beans climbing to the top of poles twelve feet high? What more beautiful than potato or okra blossoms? What more imposing than the huge golden pumpkin blos- soms, or more picturesque than the ripe green or yellow pumpkins themselves, studding the field after the corn has been cut, or the luxuriant vines on which they grew, overgrowing the whole garden if you let them and why not after most other crops are in? Before the corn is cut, how gracefully its broad, rustling leaves wave in the wind! How stately are the pollen-laden tassels which fer- tilize the silk that starts the ears! What delicate shades of green and yellow and red in the leaves of carrots, beets, chard! Parsley needs no hair curler to look well, and crimpy Savoy cabbage fascinates the eye. Red ripe tomatoes (cultivated until half a century ago only for their beauty "love apples," they were called) peep from the green foliage. No, I say it again, the vegetable garden needs no bor- rowing from the flower garden to make itself ^ CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 31 aesthetically attractive. To cap the climax, what flowering plant surpasses the multicolored stripes of Burbank's Rainbow corn, or the feathery fluffiness and rich green of asparagus? I used to wonder why so many farmers have no vegetable gardens, not to speak of flower gardens. As a matter of fact, a farmer's time is all taken up with his field crops and animals, though he may work from 5 A.M. to 9 or 10 P.M. As for farmers' wives, it is seldom their house- hold duties allow them time and energy enough to have much of a garden, either useful or orna- mental. There are, however, two flowering plants which may be found on nearly every farm, par- ticularly in New England. In traveling from New York to Portland, Maine, I have often amused myself trying to find a farm that did not have a big clump of lilacs. No wonder they are favorites, in view of their ravishing fragrance and easy culture. NASTURTIUMS NO LONGER "YELLOW DOGS" The nasturtium is the other favorite that may be almost always found somewhere near a farmhouse. Its being showy and delicately fragrant doesn't fully account for its univer- sality. Other flowers are equally fragrant and lovely, but they are not so easily grown. The nasturtium is a little more trouble than the lilac because it has to be planted every year, 32 GARDENING WITH BRAINS <$ but it will stand more neglect than any other annual. Regardless of weeds and drought and impoverished soil, it continues to bloom till frost; and the blossoms do not have to be picked, like those of other flowering plants. There is a belief that the poorer the soil the larger the number of flowers in proportion to the leaves; but do not allow this doctrine to beguile you into starving your nasturtium plants. Give them a rich soil to grow in, for if you don't the flowers will not have those long stems which women who arrange bouquets consider so neces- sary. I raise only the climbing nasturtiums and give them all the elbow room they want. Usu- ally I plant mine along one side of the poppy bed, which they overrun in riotous profusion after the poppies are gone. In up-to-date nasturtiums the circular, pel- tate leaves each looking "like a shield on the arm of a soldier," or like lotos leaves, some of them oddly bleached, blotched, and striped have a charm of their own which quite justifies their luxuriance. Whether in rows or clumps near the house, or hanging down from a wall or a tub, or climbing a fence or a rock, the nas- turtium is always decorative. Its fragrance is not surpassed for delicacy and originality or individuality, or whatever you choose to call it, by any other flower. If the poets have not raved about it as they have about the rose and the violet, it is doubtless because neither its * CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 33 common name nor the botanical "tropaeolum" lends itself easily to the versifier's require- ments. As for its colors, I once knew a man who, while enjoying the fragrance of nasturtiums, hated the sight of them. "Yellow dogs," he called them but that was years ago, before the nasturtiums had suffered a sea change into something rich and strange. From Colombia came a new species, the Tropaeolum lob- bianum, with red flowers, some of them so dark as to be almost black. By hybridizing these with the yellows the seedsmen got nas- turtiums of almost all the colors of the rainbow, with fascinating stripes and blotches and shades in endless variety. Scarlet, bronze, cherry red, chocolate, creamy white, purplish crimson, blush rose these and other colors you will find represented in named varieties in the seed catalogues. Don't order any yellows; you will have them anyway, because some of the flowers revert to the parental colors. As Luther Bur- bank remarks, "It is exceedingly difficult to keep the colors of the various nasturtiums separate." That doesn't worry me. I like par- ticularly the French chameleon and the hybrids of Madam Gunter (also French), offering a wide range of exquisite colors and beautiful markings on the same plants. The loveliest nasturtiums I ever had were the "Coquettes" 34 GARDENING WITH BRAINS offered one year by Burpee. They were so called because of their being, like woman in Virgil's line, "varium et mutabile semper." Not only did no two plants have the same spots and stripes and colors, but on the same plant and vine all the flowers differed from one another a real floral kaleidoscope. Unfor- tunately, this adorable variety was not per- petuated, probably because of the "reversion" difficulties which are so great in this flower. Because of its extreme variableness Luther Burbank specially recommended the nastur- tium to amateurs who wish to become creators of new varieties of flowers. (See p. 186, Vol. X, of his Methods and Discoveries.) But with a hundred other choice flowers waiting for a word of commendation, I must not dwell any longer on this favorite, which is unique in being so universal and democratic and yet so aristocratic and refined. Have you ever seen one of the mail-order catalogues sent out by some department stores huge volumes of nearly a thousand pages, describing and picturing tens of thousands of all sorts of things which somebody living in the country might want? Catalogues of flower seeds are not so voluminous as these, yet most of them list a bewildering variety of plants, not a few of which might as well be discarded. More and more I agree with E. P. Powell that "most of the annuals take more time and room ^ CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 35 than they are worth." He devotes a long chapter of his The Country Home to telling what flowering plants of all kinds he thinks ought to be generally favored. His advice is sound. If you wish to consult your own taste or use your own judgment rather than his or mine get a copy of Harriet L. Keeler's Our Garden Flowers (Scribners), a delightful book to lovers of flowers, giving not only botanical descriptions, with 276 illustrations, but telling whence they came, and relating their life histories and grad- ual improvement. The author modestly claims for her volume that it is only "fairly complete" yet she had at her disposal 550 pages! Do not, therefore, scold me if in this chapter I call attention to only a few of the very finest and most highly educated plants which ought to be grown in all gardens the makers of which have brains, industry, patience, time, a good soil, and plenty of water. The amount of time you can spare is the first thing to be considered. If you have plenty, it would be inexcusable not to grow pansies, poppies, and sweet peas. These I consider the most enjoyable, on the whole, of all garden flowers, and I have therefore given a whole chapter to each of them. There are perhaps a dozen flowers equally beautiful or fragrant, but some of them bloom only a few weeks, whereas the three favorites I have named can 36 GARDENING WITH BRAINS be made to bloom from two to six or even eight months. LET FRAGRANCE DECIDE If your time is limited, plant flowering shrubs, or bulbs, or perennials in preference to annuals, because they are generally if given a good start better able to take care of themselves. Among a hundred lilac bushes there are prob- ably not three which receive any attention, yet, ever faithful, they bloom from year to year. Almost equally independent are most other hardy flowering shrubs. Among the multitude to select from, choose by all means those which, like the lilac, delight the sense of smell as well as the color sense. Earliest of all flowers in our parks is the Tartarian honeysuckle, the blossoms of which are in such a hurry to perfume the air that they do not wait for the leaves to appear. You also want, of course, one or two syringajbushes, also called mock orange; but be sure to get one of the varieties which really do mock the delicious perfume of the orange blossom; some don't and are therefore disappointing. Hydrangeas are coming more and more into favor, and so are the Japanese deutzias and snowballs* DU t these are not fragrant. Nor is the dogwood, or the spirea, one variety of which (Bridal Wreath) has been called the most beau- tiful and useful of shrubs. But the striking *8? CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 37 new ever-blooming butterfly bush has a pleasant scent. If you want to be intoxicated by fra- grance, be sure and grow a strawberry bush; its odor is ravishing, unfor- getable. I have kept in my memory for more than half a century the moment when, in explor- ing a deserted farm, I came across a calycanthus bush ^nd drank in the voluptuous sweetness of its wood and flowers. Among the hardy climbers there are some, like the feathery clematis, the house-climbing ampelopsis (Japanese or Boston ivy), and the English ivy, which are very desirable for decora- tive purposes, yet they appeal to only one of our senses, whereas cinnamon vine, the Japanese (Hall's) honeysuckle, and, above all, the wis- taria, also thrill with their fragrance. A doubt- ing lover who can lure his adored one into a wistaria bower will find her quite unable to say "No" in such a blissful atmosphere. Of roses, which are both climbers and bushes, there is nothing I could say which has not been said enthusiastically a thousand times. There are more than five thousand species and vari- eties; the best of them are briefly described in the catalogues of seedsmen, who also usually supply free leaflets telling about applications of liquid manure and bone meal and winter protection and other things amateur rose grow- ers should know. My only bit of advice is, select those which, besides lovely color and 38 GARDENING WITH BRAINS * form, also have fragrance. Why buy half a loaf when for the same money and care you can get a whole loaf? Mr. W. J. Chittenden, F. R. H. S. and editor of Garden Life, in the splendid article on roses contributed by him to Black's Gardening Dictionary (a most useful volume of 1,237 pages), refers to the keen disappointment felt by flower lovers because so many fine roses lack the charm of fragrance. "In the old-fashioned Hybrid Perpetuals fragrance was more common than it is among the present race of Hybrid Teas; it is, however, satisfactory to note that many of these are deliciously scented, and some raisers make this one of their ideals." He gives the names of fifty varieties in which fragrance is especially pronounced. WHY BULBS AND PERENNIALS? Flowers from bulbs are usually so lovely and so easily grown that there is no excuse for not having some in every garden. Even the busy farmer's wife can find a few odd moments in the autumn to remove a small portion of turf here and there, loosen up the soil and mix with it some bone meal or old manure (fresh manure should never be used with bulbs), and then replace it firmly after inserting a crocus or narcissus bulb. If this is done on an orna- mental lawn the mower must spare these spots until the bulb's leaves have become yellow. * CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 39 It cannot be denied that the crocus, the nar- cissus, the tulip, the hyacinth, and most other flowers grown from bulbs bloom only a short time. Many hesitate, on that account, to give them whole beds to themselves. But this is not necessary. The leaves of these plants die and disappear soon after blooming, which leaves the field clear for other flowers. While the tulips, etc., are still in bloom you sow in among them the seeds of annuals like portulaccas, I petunias, poppies, verbenas, dianthuses, cos- I moses, which in turn pass away when the autumn frosts come, thus leaving the ground clear for the bulbs to push up again the following spring. Hyacinths are exquisitely scented, which is an additional reason for growing them; so are daffo- dils, jonquils, and other varieties of narcissus, like the poeticus and polyanthus or nosegay narcissus. Sweet-scented are the' freesias and many of the lilies above all the hemerocallis, or yellow lily, a bed of which simply must be included in every epicure's garden. Some of the tulips, notably, among the cottage tulips, Mrs. | Moon, Columbus, and the Gesneriana (Lutea, | Lutea pallida, and Major; I should like to | know something about this Gesner), and among . the Darwins the Pride of Haarlem, are distinctly I sweet scented. Others have only a sort of faint generic tulip odor. For the eye the most beautiful tulips are the 40 GARDENING WITH BRAINS "8 Darwins and the well-named parrot tulips, which look almost as exotic and orchidlike as gladioli. I asked Luther Burbank why he has not got busy intensifying the fragrance of some of the tulips, as he has done in the case of other flowers, like the larkspurs, callas, dahlias, ver- benas, and some lilies, especially the callas, to which he has imparted the odor of the Parma violet, the rarest of violet odors. He answered : "Tulips do not thrive very well in our particular locality, but they can all be made to have fra- grance. The gladiolus," he added, "will some- time have fragrance." I sincerely hope so. 1 This is a matter of very great importance to flower gardeners and breeders. If you have studied the seedsmen's catalogues for the last two or three decades you will know that fra- grant flowers are coming more and more to the front. "It is probably true with regard to fragrance, as with regard to combinations of colors, that there are unrevealed hereditary factors in the germ plasms of most flowers," says Burbank. To him fragrance is "the very soul of the flower." With all its attractive qualities, he found the dahlia "not quite a per- fect flower because it lacks fragrance." "There is no line of experimental work with the flowers that should be more attractive than the develop- 1 For some very interesting remarks on enhancing the fragrance of flowers see Burbank's vol. ii, p. 80; ix, 23-29, 219, 247; x, 107-110. Read also the summary in Harwood's New Creations in Plant Life (Macmillan), chapter en "Breeding for Perfumes." $ CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 41 ment of fragrant varieties of some odorless flowers," he declares. One of the chief manu- facturers of perfumery in this country took the liveliest interest in Burbank's work along this line. He remarked that one of the main reasons why perfumery is not extracted in this country is because people pay so much attention to large things in agriculture thousand-acre farms and the like when, in reality, far more money could be made along intensive lines; as, for example, in the line of perfumery production. Most kinds of garden flowers are far more beautiful in shape and varied in color than they were in the days of our grandparents. In some of them it would seem as if the limit of beautification had been reached. / am there- fore convinced that during the next few decades the breeders of ornamental plants will devote their attention more and more to the fragrance of flowers, following the lead of Luther Burbank. In that direction there is room for much improvement. PEONIES AND PERENNIAL PHLOX Hardly had I written the foregoing page when the rural postman brought me the fall catalogue for 1921 of one of the largest and most reliable seedsmen. Opening it at random on page 27, the heading "Dreer's Fragrant Peonies" stared me in the face an instance showing how the emphasis is beginning to be 42 GARDENING WITH BRAINS "$ placed on fragrance. There are a great many varieties of peonies more than a thousand and a large proportion, while lovely to look at, are unscented or even have an unpleasant odor. Mrs. Edward Harding devotes nineteen pages of her superbly illustrated Book of the Peony (Lippincott) to a list of 125 superior varieties, marking those which are fragrant with an X and excluding the ill-smelling varieties alto- gether. The rose peony has an odor singularly and deliriously like that of the rose. Other sorts vary in odor almost as widely as in color markings. In the Bulletin of the American Peony Society (No. 2, 1916) A. H. Fewkes calls attention to the curious fact that color seems to have some influence on odor. While the full double rose-pink varieties are the most fragrant, the single or semidouble reds are inclined to be ill smelling, and the full double reds, in most instances, lack odor entirely. The scented kinds run "the entire gamut from a pleasant freshness of odor up to intoxicating fragrance." To speak of the "intoxicating" fragrance of some peonies is no exaggeration; nor does Mrs. Harding use too strong language when, in writing about the wonderful shapes and texture and colors of peonies, with their glossy silken petals in a hundred shades, tints, and combinations of white, pink, yellow, and red, she declares that "one who sees for the first time typical speci- CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 43 mens of the modern peony is thrilled with their breath-taking loveliness; even those who know well all the fascinations of the flower are stirred by it to new wonder and delight each recurring year." The rose, she declares, "fine, exquisite, and fragrant as it is, must yield first rank to the modern peony, which by reason of its sheer wealth of splendor and majesty of presence is now entitled to be called the Queen of Flowers." Long ago the Chinese called it Sho Yo, which means the "most beautiful" of flowers. 1 From Texas, the connecting link between the United States and Mexico, comes one of our most dazzling colored annuals Phlox Drum- ncLondii; one of its names, indeed, is Pride of Texas. It is so popular that one of our leading seedsmen, James Vick, alone has a crop of twenty-five acres of it in separate colors white, salmon, pink, scarlet, rose, eyed or striped or plain but always dazzling; the Greek word phlox means flame. Vaughan con- siders it "the showiest and most easily raised of all annuals." Much of its rainbow splendor is, of course, due to the efforts of hybridizers, but even as it grew wild in Texas a century ago the 1 Full cultural directions, etc., are given in Mrs. Harding's volume. She warns against mulching with manure in the fall. Use bone meal and wood ashes to enrich the soil. Henry A. Dreer of Phila- delphia has issued, for 25 cents, a pamphlet of 78 pages, Hints on the Growing of Bulbs, which gives all necessary cultural direc- tions for peonies, phloxes, irises, lilies, begonias, gladioli, and the favorite other plantis grown from bulbs and roots. A good book to have on your shelves is Mrs. Ely's A Woman's Hardy Garden. 44 GARDENING WITH BRAINS Phlox Drummondii must have been very lovely. An Englishman who in 1835 sent some seeds home was rewarded by having his name immortalized in connection with it. It is not often that fame is so easily won. Native Americans, also, are the perennial phloxes. E. P. Powell places these, among perennials, right after roses and lilies and who but a peonyite could disagree? I cannot imagine my summer home without groups or rows of these tall, stately plants; their fra- grance (stronger than that of the annual phlox) is uniquely agreeable and varies in the different varieties, as does that of peonies and lilies. Be sure and get your roots which it is best to set out in the early autumn from a reputable dealer, and to select named sorts, thus avoiding the mediocrities which infest flower gardens like everything else. To avoid frequent watering later on, dig the soil two feet deep and put in a lot of moisture-retaining well -rotted manure and leaf mold, with which bone meal and wood ashes should be mixed. But remember that, like most perennials, phloxes, to blossom freely, need several thorough waterings just before and while they bloom. The blooming period can be made to extend from June to October by breaking off the spikes as soon as the multitudinous flowers have dropped off. In the case of the peonies the blooming CHOICE GARDEN FLOWERS 45 period cannot be thus prolonged; but by selecting early, midseason, and late varieties it can be extended to about two months. 1 LILIES, IRISES, AND GLADIOLI I have already given peremptory orders that a small bed of Hemerocallis flava, or lemon j lily, simply must find a place in every epicure's ' garden because of its ravishing fragrance. But there are other lilies no less alluring by their scent, not to speak of their lovely shapes and colors. The hemerocallis is also called "day lily" because each flower blooms only a day, but there are many others to succeed it, and it has the advantage of "needing no coddling," whereas other varieties do better in partial shade than when exposed to the sun's full glare. All lily bulbs are easily damaged by careless exposure or direct contact with manure. But by using your brains you can have glorious suc- cess with any and all of them. "I have had nine / hundred Madonna blooms in a single bed of a j dozen feet in diameter," writes Mr. Powell; ' "the fragrance, pure, strong, and wholesome, filled my garden and shrubbery. I do not know of anything more perfect than a stalk of lilies three or four feet tall, and crowned with five to 1 See Mrs. Harding's peony book, pp. 105-115. Seedsmen ought to follow her example in indicating the relative period of blooming. Also and this is very important the seed catalogues should invariably refer to the fragrance of all flowers that have it. 46 GARDENING WITH BRAINS