Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Horticulture, Recycling and Training in Schools and University

Schools adopt horticulture and recycling in their study plan

Horticulture in schools

Some schools have implemented organic gardening to develop students' skills in the production of horticulture, pest control and recycling techniques.
The orchard technician , engineer L. H., said that students can develop skills to " cultural management and recycling techniques, so you can use and waste materials in containers, irrigation and pest control."
For pest control, students learn how to build traps made ​​of plastic bottles and some toxic or repellent to insects.

" We make traps for flying mosquito containing honey so the bug it is traped by this improvised glue.7

Another trap attracts bugs (crawling ones) with water and beer, and so they die  because of too much liquid," this is what the student in charge to set the traps.


The Professor of Natural Sciences said that students are sensitized about environmental care , recycling and may also carry some supplies for their homes."

Many of our students come from rural areas. I've Seen that when needed they can take products to their home serving as a great help for the family budget ," he says.

The director of the Educational unit, said that the mayor can provide material agriculture as part of the Organic Gardens and the school , with parent meeting can contribute to the construction of the garden.

" It is self-sustaining . With products sold you can buy more seeds to grow the garden. the products can be sold at local markets.
A beginner gardener student visit the garden every other day. " I never knew how to place the seeds. Each must go on a respective place . Stronger seeds can be chosen depending on their colors. I like also to plant and harvest ," said the high school student.

Gardening and Horticulture Training practice at UNR
The Black River National University , through the Extension Area Andina headquarters , reports that in the month of October will begin the course " Practical Gardening and Horticulture " by Silvana Eng Technician Alzogaray and Gardening Santiago NaĆ³n .

The course is open to the entire community and will be held in the premises of the UNRN and Production Area Andean Forest Service ( 10.5 km ) , for 11 monthly classes to develop during the year 2013/14 in Bariloche.
The course objective is to provide knowledge and skills concerned to produce , maintain and operate plants , ornamental and horticultural family scale through organic cultivation and maintenance of gardens professionalized.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Why You Should have your Own Garden


There are added affidavit to-day than ever before why the buyer of a baby place should accept his, or her, own vegetable garden.


The canicule of home weaving, home cheese-making, home meat-packing, are
gone. With a thousand and one other things that acclimated to be fabricated or done at home, they accept larboard the abode and followed the branch chimney. These things could be angry over to machinery.


The growing of vegetables cannot be so disposed of. Garden accoutrement accept been improved, but they are still the aforementioned old one-man affairs--doing one thing, one row at a time.



Labor is still the big factor--and that, taken in aggregate with the amount of alteration and administration such perishable being as garden produce, explains why the home agriculturalist can grow his own vegetables at beneath amount than he can shop for them.
That is a good actuality to remember.


But afterwards all, I agnosticism if best of us will attending at the amount abandoned after consulting the domiciliary budget. The big thing, the arresting feature of home agronomical is not that we may get our vegetables ten per cent cheaper, but that we can accept them one hundred per cent better.


Even the long-keeping sorts, like squash, potatoes and onions, are actual clearly added adorable appropriate from the home garden, fresh from the accouterment or the ground; but aback it comes to peas, and corn, and lettuce,--well, there is actually annihilation to analyze with the home garden ones, aggregate fresh, in the aboriginal askance sunlight, still gemmed with dew, still brittle and breakable and juicy, accessible to backpack every atom of agreeable quality, afterwards loss, to the dining table.


Stale, flat and barren indeed, afterwards these accept already been tasted, assume the limp, travel-weary, arenaceous things that are jounced about to us in the back of a barter . It is not in amount abandoned that makes home agronomical pay.


There is addition point: the bazaar agriculturalist has to abound the things that give the more good yield. He has to cede affection to quantity. You do not.


One cannot shop for Golden Bantam corn, or Mignonette lettuce, or Gradus peas in best markets. They are top quality, but they do not ample the market crate abundant times to the row to pay the bartering grower. If you cannot afford to accumulate a able agriculturalist there is abandoned one way to accept the best vegetables--grow your own!


And this brings us to the third, and what may be the best important reason why you should garden.
It is the cheapest, healthiest, keenest pleasure there is. Give me a brilliant garden application in the golden springtime, aback the copse are acrimonious out their fresh gowns, in all the various self-colored aerial grays and greens--strange how beautiful they are, in the aforementioned old abiding styles, isn't it?--give me seeds to watch as they acquisition the light, plants to tend as they booty authority in the fine, loose, affluent soil, and you may accept the added sports. And when you accept developed annoyed of their monotony, appear aback in summertime to alike the smallest garden, and you will acquisition in it, every day, a fresh botheration to be solved, a fresh attack to be agitated out, a fresh achievement to win.


Better food, added good health, added good living--all these the home garden offers you in abundance. And the amount is abandoned the amount of every worth-while thing--honest, airy accommodating work.


But abundant for now of the dream garden. Put bottomward your book. Put on
your old clothes , and let's go outdoors and attending the abode over, and pick out the best atom for that garden-patch of yours.

I hope you found an answer to our question Why You Should have your Own Garden?

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Requisites of the Home Vegetable Garden

In this post :
Requisites of the Home Vegetable Garden
EXPOSURE , THE SOIL, DRAINAGE, SOIL ANTECEDENTS, OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
In chief aloft the armpit for the home vegetable garden it is able-bodied to actuate already and for all of the old abstraction that the garden "patch" charge be an animal atom in the home surroundings. If anxiously planned, anxiously buried and thoroughly cared for, it may be fabricated a admirable and harmonious feature of the accepted scheme, lending a blow of a able home that no shrubs, borders, or annual beds can anytime produce.
With this actuality in apperception we will not feel belted to any allotment of the premises alone because it is out of afterimage abaft the barn or garage. In the boilerplate moderate-sized abode there will not be abundant best as to and. It will be all-important to booty what is to be had and again do the very best that can be done with it. But there will apparently be a good deal of best as to, first, exposure, and second, convenience. Other things actuality equal, baddest a atom abreast at hand, accessible to access. It may seem that a aberration of alone a few hundred yards will beggarly nothing, but if one is depending abundantly aloft additional moments for alive in and for watching the garden--and in the growing of abounding vegetables the latter is about as important as the former--this amount of convenient access will be of abundant greater accent than is acceptable to be at first recognized. Not until you accept had to accomplish a dozen backward trips for abandoned seeds or tools, or gotten your anxiety assimilation wet by going out through the dew-drenched grass, will you apprehend absolutely what this may mean.
EXPOSURE
But the affair of aboriginal accent to accede in acrimonious out the spot that is to crop you beatitude and adorable vegetables all summer, or even for abounding years, is the exposure. Aces out the "earliest" atom you can find--a artifice angled a little to the south or east, that seems to catch sunshine aboriginal and authority it late, and that seems to be out of the direct aisle of the air-conditioned arctic and northeast winds. If a building, or alike an old fence, protects it from this direction, your garden will be helped forth wonderfully, for an aboriginal alpha is a abundant big factor toward success. If it is not already protected, a lath fence, or a hedge of some low-growing shrubs or adolescent evergreens, will add actual greatly to its usefulness. The accent of accepting such a protection or apartment is altogether underestimated by the amateur.
THE SOIL
The affairs are that you will not acquisition a atom of ideal garden soil ready for use anywhere aloft your place. But all except the actual worst of soils can be brought up to a actual aerial amount of productiveness-- especially such baby areas as home vegetable area require. Large tracts of adobe that are about authentic sand, and others so abundant and mucky that for centuries they lay uncultivated, accept frequently been brought, in the advance of alone a few years, to area they crop annually tremendous crops on a bartering basis. So do not be beat about your soil. Proper analysis of it is abundant added important, and a gardenpatch of boilerplate run-down,--or "never-brought-up" soil--will produce much added for the active and accurate agriculturalist than the richest spot will abound beneath boilerplate methods of cultivation.
The ideal garden adobe is a "rich, albino loam." And the actuality cannot be overemphasized that such soils usually are made, not found. Let us analyze that description a bit, for appropriate actuality we appear to the aboriginal of the four all-important factors of gardening--food. The others are cultivation, damp and temperature. "Rich" in the gardener's vocabulary agency abounding of bulb food; added than that--and this is a point of basic importance--it agency abounding of bulb aliment accessible to be used at once, all able and advance out on the garden table, or rather where growing things can at already accomplish use of it; or what we term, in one word, "available" bulb food. Practically no soils in longinhabited communities abide artlessly affluent abundant to aftermath big crops. They are fabricated rich, or kept rich, in two ways; first, by cultivation, which helps to change the raw bulb aliment stored in the soil into accessible forms; and second, by agriculture or abacus bulb food to the adobe from alfresco sources.
"Sandy" in the faculty actuality used, agency a adobe absolute enough particles of beach so that baptize will canyon through it afterwards abrogation it pasty and adhesive a few canicule afterwards a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, beneath accustomed conditions, will crumble and fall afar readily afterwards actuality apprenticed in the hand. It is not necessary that the adobe be albino in appearance, but it should be friable.
"Loam: a rich, brittle soil," says Webster. That hardly covers it, but it does call it. It is adobe in which the beach and adobe are in proper proportions, so that neither abundantly predominate, and usually dark in color, from agronomics and enrichment. Such a soil, alike to the green eye, aloof artlessly looks as if it would abound things. It is arresting how bound the accomplished concrete actualization of a allotment of well able arena will change. One instance came about aftermost fall in one of my gardens, area a band had independent onions for two years, and a little allotment bulging off from the average of this had been able for them for aloof one season. The blow had not accustomed any extra fertilizing or cultivation. When the garden was bashed up in the fall, all three sections were as audibly apparent as admitting they were separated by a fence. And I apperceive that abutting springs crop of carrots, before it is bashed under, will appearance the curve of bound just as plainly.
This, then, will accord you an abstraction of a acceptable garden soil. Perhaps in yours there will be too abundant sand, or too abundant clay. That will be a disadvantage, but one which activity and backbone will anon overcome to a abundant extent--by the methods you will be acquirements in Chapter VIII.
DRAINAGE
There is, however, one added affair you charge attending out for in selecting your garden site, and that is drainage. Dig bottomward eight or twelve inches after you accept best out a favorable spot, and appraise the sub-soil. This is the additional strata, usually of altered arrangement and blush from the affluent apparent soil, and harder than it. If you acquisition a albino or gravelly bed, no amount how chicken and poor it looks, you accept chosen the appropriate spot. But if it is a stiff, abundant clay, abnormally a blue clay, you will accept to either cesspool it or be agreeable with a actual late garden--that is, unless you are at the top of a altitude or on a slope. Chapter VII contains added suggestions in attention to this problem.
SOIL ANTECEDENTS
There was a added acumen for advertence that band of onion ground. It is a actual applied analogy of what aftermost year's administration of the soil agency to this year's garden. If you can aces out a spot, alike if it is not the best adorable in added ways, that has been able-bodied enriched or able for a year or two previous, booty that for this year's garden. And in the concurrently accept the atom on which you intend to make your abiding vegetable garden thoroughly "fitted," and abound there this year a crop of potatoes or candied corn, as appropriate in Chapter IX. Then abutting year you will accept altitude aloof appropriate to accord your vegetables a abundant start.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
There are added things of accessory accent but account considering, such as the appearance of your garden plot, for instance. The added nearly rectangular, the added acceptable it will be to assignment and the added easily kept apple-pie and neat. Accept it ample enough, or at atomic accessible on two ends, so that a rototiller can be acclimated in agronomics and tilling. And if by any agency you can accept it aural ability of an able accumulation of water, that will be a amazing advice in seasons of abiding drought. Then again, if you accept arena enough, lay off two plots so that you can take advantage of the convenance of rotation, alternating grass, potatoesor blah with the vegetable garden. Of advance it is accessible to practice crop circling to some admeasurement aural the banned of alike the small vegetable garden, but it will be abundant better, if possible, to rotate the absolute garden-patch.
All these things, then, one has to accumulate in apperception in acrimonious the spot best ill-fitted for the home vegetable garden. It should be, if possible, of acceptable access; it should accept a balmy acknowledgment and be well enriched, able-bodied agitated soil, not too ablaze nor too heavy, and by all means able-bodied drained. If it has been thoroughly able for a year or two previous, so abundant the better. If it is abreast a accumulation of water, so situated that it can be at atomic bashed and tilled with a rototiller, and ample abundant to acquiesce the garden to be confused every added year or two, still added the better.
Fill all of these requirements that you can, and again by demography full advantage of the advantages you have, you can abatement the disadvantages. Afterwards all it is careful, assiduous work, added than natural advantages, that will acquaint the story; and a acceptable garden does not grow--it is made.

Requisites of the Home Vegetable Garden

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Lungwort:define Lungwort Pulmonaria species, growing in shade gardens and uses

Lungwort:define

Lungwort Pulmonaria
(Pulmonaria species)
These clump-forming perennials can be grown as case plants or as a groundcover in partial to abounding shade. The foliage of best breed and varieties is blooming with white or argent spots. However, some of the newer varieties accept essentially silver leaves with blooming margins.
In accession to the adorable foliage, lungworts additionally aftermath white, pink, or dejected fl owers in spring. The accepted name refers to the declared value

Growing, Know How

For those beginner gardeners. - Grow this bulb in adumbration or allotment adumbration conditions. In abounding sun, you ability acquisition Lungworth a little billowing although it will survive.
Give Lungwort a appropriate adobe with able summertime moisture. This is not a bulb for the dry adumbration or it will artlessly atrophy away. Do not accord it adobe clay as it will rot over the winter. Abound it in a acceptable "forest-soil" one that has a aerial absorption of amoebic amount (dig in admixture and/or peat moss) and approved waterings.
What you may acquisition with Lungwort is that if you corruption it in any way, it will artlessly achromatize away. It will appear aback the afterward spring! (so don't accord up hope) It responds to corruption (too hot, too abundant sun etc) by disappearing.
Propagation and Hardiness
The easiest for the home garden is to bisect Lungwort in aboriginal bounce or in fall.
Lungwort is able appropriate bottomward to USDA area 2/3 (2 if adequate in the winter)

Varieties
There are some actual absorbing Lungwort varieties in garden centers now and the leaves appear in a advanced array of shapes, shades of blooming as able-bodied as variegations.
This is a acceptable aggregate bulb with hosta because of the choices in blade variations.

**Pulmonaria 'Baby Blue' This is the tightest, best compact, mounded anatomy to date and it won't abound to breach in the center. Flowers age to a admirable babyish blue.

**Pulmonaria 'Majeste' Solid silvery-gray leaves with a actual attenuated blooming margin. In backward spring, ablaze blush buds pop accessible to acknowledge darker bluish-pink annual bells.

**Pulmonaria 'Raspberry Ice' Long, arctic blooming leaves belted in fair with raspberry blush annual clusters accommodate a abrupt contrast, and absolutely assume to ablaze this bulb up.

**Pulmonaria 'Raspberry Splash' raspberry-pink annual clusters ball amid the aphotic green, silver-spotted leaves in backward spring. One of the added cocked growing addiction and abounding bloomers.

**Pulmonaria 'Samourai' Dejected flowers are produced in backward spring. The continued leaves are authentic silver.

**Pulmonaria 'Silver Shimmers' Clusters of almost large, steel-blue flowers are abeyant aloft the long, bouncing foliage which charcoal low. The leaves are heavily saturated with silver.

**Pulmonaria longifolia 'Bertram Anderson' Gentian dejected flowers arising from fuchia buds in backward spring. Like added P. longifolia, 'Bertram Anderson' has long, attenuated leaves heavily spotted with silver.

**Pulmonaria 'Diana Clare' angel blooming leaves biconcave in argent accumulate their blush all division long. Their long, acicular leaves adverse able-bodied with the violet-blue flowers

**Pulmonaria longifolia 'Roy Davidson' mounded foliage of 'Roy Davidson' is heavily spotted with argent and are continued and narrow. One of the abate varieties.

**Pulmonaria officinalis 'Sissinghurst White' White flowering, the leaves are brindled with silver.

**Pulmonaria saccharata 'Mrs. Moon' an earlier variety, it has mounded, argent spotted foliage. In backward spring, magenta-pink buds accessible to ablaze dejected bell-shaped flowers.
Lungwort is a accomplished adumbration garden bulb and I confess, one of my favorites.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Beginner Vegetable gardening - General guidance

Beginner Vegetable Gardening

It is with an activity in which there is article of abhorrence that I close
these pages--fear that abounding of those little things which become second
nature to the agriculturalist of plants and assume unimportant, but which
sometimes are aloof the things that the abecedarian wants to apperceive about,
may accept been aback larboard out. In every operation described,
however, I accept approved to acknowledgment all all-important details. I would urge
the reader, nevertheless, to abstraction as thoroughly as accessible all the
garden problems with which he will acquisition himself confronted and to this
end acclaim that he apprehend several of the abounding garden books which are
now to be had. It will be to his advantage to see alike the same
subjects presented afresh from added credibility of view. The added familiar
he can accomplish himself, both in approach and in practice, with all the
multitude of operations which avant-garde agronomical involves, the
greater the success he will attain.
Personally, the added I accept gone into the growing of things--and
that has now become my business as able-bodied as my pleasure--the more
absorbingly absorbing I acquisition it. Anniversary season, anniversary crop, offers its
own problems and a accolade for the actual band-aid of them. It is a
work which, alike to the beginner, presents the befalling of deducting
new conclusions, aggravating fresh experiments, authoritative fresh discoveries. It is
a assignment which offers affable and advantageous amusement to the abounding whose
days charge be, for the best part, spent in appointment or shop; and it gives
very abundant advice in the world-old botheration of authoritative both ends
meet.
Let the garden abecedarian not be aghast if he does not succeed, for
the aboriginal division or two, or possibly three, with aggregate he plants.
There is usually a preventable acumen for the failure, and studious
observation will acknowledge it. With the avant-garde success in the application
of insecticides and fungicides, and the addendum of the convenance of
irrigation, the accountable of agronomical begins to be bargain to a
scientific and (what is added to the point) a abiding basis. We are getting
control of the ambiguous factors. All this affects first, perhaps, the
person who grows for profit, but with our present advanced apportionment of
every fresh abstraction and analysis in such matters, it charge ability anon to
every alien home garden application which is cared for by a wide-awake
gardener.
Such a person, from the actuality that he or she is account a fresh garden
book, I booty the clairvoyant to be. I achievement this volume, abridged admitting it
is, has added to your armamentarium of applied garden information; that it
will advice to abound that accepted additional brand of grass. I accept alone to
add, as I about-face afresh to the problems cat-and-mouse for me in acreage and under
glass, that I ambition you all success in your work--the authoritative of better
gardens in America.
Beginner Vegetable Gardening

Calendar of Home Vegetable Gardening for all the year, Planting plan


Planting Plan. The importance of accurately planning the work ahead was emphasized I mentioned there the check list used to make sure that everything would be carried out, or started ahead at the proper time--as with the sowing

of seeds. The following garden operations, given month by month, will serve not only as a timely reminder of things to be done, but as the basis for such a check list.

JANUARY
Probably one of the good resolutions made with the New Year was a better garden for the coming summer. The psychologists claim that the only hope for resolutions is to nail them down at the start with an action--that seems to have more effect in making an actual impression on the brain. So start the good work along by sending at once for several of the leading seed catalogs.

Planting Plan. Make out a list of what you are going to want this year, and then make your Planting Plan.
Seeds. Order your seed. Do it now while the seed store's stock is full; while he is not rushed; while there is ample time to rectify mistakes if any occur.
Manures. Altogether too few amateur gardeners realize the great importance of procuring early every pound of manures, of any kind, to be had. It often may be had cheaply at this time of year, and by composting, adding phosphate, and several turnings, if you have any place under cover where it can be collected, you can double its value before spring.
Frames. Even at this season of the year do not fail to air the frames well on warm days. Practically no water will be needed, but if the soil does dry out sufficiently to need it, apply early on a bright morning.
Onions. It will not be too early, this month, to sow onions for spring transplanting outside. Get a packet each of Prizetaker, AilsaCraig, Mammoth Silver-skin, or Gigantic Gibraltar. Lettuce. Sow lettuce for spring crop under glass or in frames.
Fruit. This is a good month to prune grapes, currants, gooseberries and peach trees, to avoid the rush that will come later.

FEBRUARY
Hotbeds. A little early for making them until after the 15th, but get all your material ready--manure, selected and stacked; lumber ready for any new ones; sash all in good repair. Starting Seeds. First part of the month, earliest planting of cabbage, cauliflower and lettuce should be made; and two to four weeks later for main early crop. At this time also, beets and earliest celery.
Tools. Overhaul them all now; order repairs. Get new catalogs and study new improvements and kinds you do not possess. Poles and brush. Whether you use the old-fashioned sort (now harder to obtain than they used to be) or make your "poles" and use wire trellis for peas, attend to it now. Fruit. Finish up last month's work, if not all done. Also examine plum and cherry trees for black-knot.

MARCH
Hotbeds. If not made last of February, should be made at once. Some of the seed sown last month will be ready for transplanting and going into the frames; also lettuce sown in January. Radish and carrot
(forcing varieties) may be sown in alternating rows. Give much more air; water on bright mornings; be careful not to have them caught by suddenly cold nights after a bright warm day.
Seed-sowing under glass. Last sowing of early cabbage and early summer cabbages (like Succession), lettuce, rhubarb (for seedling plants), cauliflower, radish, spinach, turnip, and early tomatoes; towards last of month, late tomatoes and first of peppers, and eggplant. Sweet peas often find a place in the vegetable garden; start a few early, to set out later; they will do better than if started outside. Start tomatoes for growing in frames. For early potatoes sprout in sand.

Planting, outside. If an early spring, and the ground is sufficiently dry, sow onions, lettuce, beet, radish, (sweet peas), smooth peas, early carrot, cabbage, leek, celery (main crop), and turnip. Set out new beds of asparagus, rhubarb and sea-kale (be sure to try a few plants of the latter). Manure and fork up old beds of above. Fruit. Prune now, apple, plum and pear trees.

APRIL
Now the rush is on! Plan your work, and work your plan. But do not yield to the temptation to plant more than you can look out for later on. Remember it is much easier to sow seeds than to pull out weeds.

The Frames. Air! water! and do not let the green plant-lice or the white-fly get a ghost of a chance to start. Almost every day the glass should be lifted entirely off. Care must be taken never to let the soil or flats become dried out; toward the end of the month, if it is bright and warm, begin watering towards evening instead of in early morning, as you should have been doing through the winter. If proper attention is given to ventilation and moisture, there will not be much danger from the green plant-louse (aphis) and white-fly, but at the first sign of one fight them to a finish. Use kerosene emulsion, tobacco dust, tobacco preparations, or Aphine. Seed sowing. Under glass: tomato, egg-plant and peppers. On sod: corn, cucumbers, melons, early squash, lima beans.

Planting, outside. Onions, lettuce, beet, etc., if not put in last month; also parsnip, salsify, parsley, wrinkled peas, endive. Toward the end of this month (or first part of next) second plantings of these. Set out plants of early cabbage (and the cabbage group) lettuce, onion sets, sprouted potatoes, beets, etc.
In the Garden. Cultivate between rows of sowed crops; weed out y hand just as soon as they are up enough to be seen; watch for cutworms and root-maggots.
Fruit. Thin out all old blackberry canes, dewberry and raspberry canes (if this was not done, as it should have been, directly after the fruiting season last summer). Be ready for first spraying of earlyblossoming
trees. Set out new strawberry beds, small fruits and fruit trees.

MAY
Keep ahead of the weeds. This is the month when those warm, south, driving rains often keep the ground too wet to work for days at a time, and weeds grow by leaps and bounds. Woe betide the gardener ose rows of sprouting onions, beets, carrots, etc., once become green with wild turnip and other rapid-growing intruders. Clean cultivation and slight hilling of plants set out are also essential.

The Frames. These will not need so much attention now, but care must be taken to guard tender plants, such as tomatoes, egg-plant and peppers, against sudden late frosts. The sash may be left off most of the time. Water copiously and often.

Planting, outside. First part of the month: early beans, early corn, okra and late potatoes may be put in; and first tomatoes set out --even if a few are lost--they are readily replaced. Finish setting out cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, beets, etc., from frames. Latter part of month, if warm: corn, cucumbers, some of sods from frames and early squash as traps where late crop is to be planted or set.
Fruit. Be on time with first sprayings of late-blossoming fruits--apples, etc. Rub off from grape vines the shoots that are not wanted.

JUNE
Frequent, shallow cultivation! Firm seeds in dry soil. Plant wax beans, lima beans, pole beams, melons, corn, etc., and successive crops of lettuce, radish, etc. Top-dress growing crops that need special manure (such as nitrate of soda on onions). Prune tomatoes, and cut out some foliage for extra early tomatoes. Toward end of month set celery and late cabbage. Also sow beans, beets, corn, etc., for early fall crops. Spray where
necessary. Allow asparagus to grow to tops. Fruit. Attend to spraying fruit trees and currants and
gooseberries. Make pot-layers of strawberries for July setting.

JULY
Maintain frequent, shallow cultivation. Set out late cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, leeks and celery. Sow beans, beets, corn, etc., for late fall crops. Irrigate where needed.
Fruit. Pinch back new canes of blackberry, dewberry and raspberry. Rub off second crop of buds on grapes. Thin out if too many bunches; also on plums, peaches and other fruit too thick, or touching.
Pot-layered strawberries may be set out.


AUGUST

Keep the garden clean from late weeds--especially purslane, the hotweather weed pest, which should be always removed from the garden and disposed of or rotted down.

Sow spinach, rutabaga turnip, bush beans and peas for last fall crop. During first part of month, late celery may still be put out. Sow lettuce for early fall crop, in frames. First lot of endive should be tied up for blanching.

Fruit. Strawberries may be set, and pot-layered plants, if wanted to bear a full crop the following season, should be put in. Thin out and bag grapes.

SEPTEMBER
Frames. Set in lettuce started in August. Sow radishes and successive crop of lettuce. Cooler weather begins to tell on lateplanted crops. Give cabbage, cauliflower, etc., deeper cultivation.
"Handle" celery wanted for early use. Harvest and store onions. Get squash under cover before frost. From the 15th to 25th sow spinach, onions, borecole for wintering over. Sow down thickly to rye all plots as fast as cleared of summer crops; or plow heavy land in ridges. Attend to draining.
Fruit. Trees may be set. Procure barrels for storing fruit in winter. At harvest time it is often impossible to get them at any price.

OCTOBER
Get ready for winter. Blanch rest of endive. Bank celery, to be used before Christmas, where it is. Gather tomatoes, melons, etc., to keep as long as possible. Keep especially clean and well cultivated all crops to be wintered over. Late in the month store cabbage and cauliflower; also beets, carrots, and other root crops. Get boxes, barrels, bins, sand or sphagnum moss ready beforehand, to save time in packing.
Clean the garden; store poles, etc., worth keeping over; burn everything else that will not rot; and compost everything that will. Fruit. Harvest apples, etc. Pick winter pears just before hard frosts, and store in dry dark place.

NOVEMBER
Frames. Make deep hotbeds for winter lettuce and radishes. Construct frames for use next spring. See that vegetables in basement, bins, and sheds are safe from freezing. Trench or store celery for spring use. Take in balance of all root crops if any remain in the ground, except, of course, parsnip and salsify for spring use. Put
rough manure on asparagus and rhubarb beds. Get mulch ready for spinach, etc., to be wintered over, if they occupy exposed locations. Fruit. Obtain marsh or salt hay for mulching strawberries. Cut out old wood of cane-fruits--blackberries, etc., if not done after gathering fruit. Look over fruit trees for borers.

DECEMBER
Cover celery stored last month, if trenched out-of-doors. Use only light, loose material at first, gradually covering for winter. Put mulch on spinach, etc.
Fruit. Mulch strawberries. Prune grape-vines; make first application of winter sprays for fruit trees.

AND THEN
Set about procuring manures of all kinds from every available source. Remember that anything which will rot will add to the value of your manure pile. Muck, lime, old plastering, sods, weeds (earth and all), street, stable and yard sweepings--all these and  a good Calendar of Home Vegetable Gardening - Planting Plan will increase your garden successes of next year.

A CALENDAR OF OPERATIONS
PVAE62387MCX 


The Grape - Pruning and care

THE GRAPE

No garden is so small that there cannot be found in it room for three or four grape-vines; no fruit is more certain, and few more delicious.
If it is convenient, a situation fully exposed to the sun, and sloping slightly, will be preferable. But any good soil, provided only it is rich and thoroughly drained, will produce good results. If a few vines
are to be set against walls, or in other out-of-the-way places, prepare the ground for them by excavating a good-sized hole, putting in a foot of coal cinders or other drainage material, and refilling with good
heavy loam, enriched with old, well rotted manure and half a peck of wood ashes. For culture in the garden, such special preparation will not be necessary--although, if the soil is not in good shape, it will be advisable to slightly enrich the hills.
One or two-year roots will be the most satisfactory to buy. They may be set in either fall or spring--the latter time, for New York or north, being generally preferable. When planting, the cane should be cut back to three or four eyes, and the roots should also be shortened back-- usually about one-third. Be sure to make the hole large enough, when setting, to let the roots spread naturally, and work the soil in well around them with the fingers. Set them in firmly, by pressing down hard with the ball of the foot after firming by hand. They are set about six feet apart.

GRAPE PRUNING

As stated above, the vine is cut back, when planting, to three or four eyes. The subsequent pruning--and the reader must at once distinguish between pruning, and training, or the way in which the vines are placed--will determine more than anything else the success of the undertaking. Grapes depend more upon proper pruning than any other fruit or vegetable in the garden. Two principles must be kept track of
in this work. First principle: the annual crop is borne only on canes of the same year's growth, springing from wood of the previous season's growth. Second principle: the vine, if left to itself, will set three or four times the number of bunches it can properly
mature. As a result of these facts, the following system of pruning has been developed and must be followed for sure and full-sized crops.

(1) At time of planting, cut back to three or four eyes, and after these sprout leave only one (or two) of them, which should be staked up.

(2) Following winter (December to March), leave only one cane and cut this back to three or four eyes.

(3) Second growing season, save only two canes, even if several sprout, and train these to stake or trellis. These two vines, or arms, branching from the main stem, form the foundation for the one-year canes that bear the fruit. However, to prevent the vine's setting too much fruit (see second principle above) these arms must be cut back in order to limit the number of fruit-bearing canes that will spring from them, therefore:

(4) Second winter pruning, cut back these arms to eight or ten buds-- and we have prepared for the first crop of fruit, about forty bunches, as the fruiting cane from each bud will bear two bunches on the average. However these main arms will not bear fruiting-canes another year (see first principle above) and therefore:

(5) At the third winter pruning, (a) of the canes that bore fruit, only the three or four nearest the main stem or trunk are left; (b) these are cut back to eight or ten buds each, and (c) everything else is <ruthlessly cut away.
Each succeeding year the same system is continued, care being taken to rub off, each May, buds or sprouts starting on the main trunk or arms.

The wood, in addition to being cut back, must be well ripened; and the wood does not ripen until after the fruit. It therefore sometimes becomes necessary to cut out some of the bunches in order to hasten the
ripening of the rest. At the same time the application of some potassium fertilizer will be helpful. If the bunches do not ripen up quickly and pretty nearly together, the vine is overloaded and being damaged for
the following year.

The matter of pruning being mastered, the question of training is one of individual choice. Poles, trellises, arbors, walls--almost anything may be used. The most convenient system, however, and the one I would
strongly recommend for practical home gardening for results, is known as the (modified) Kniffen system. It is simplicity itself. A stout wire is stretched five or six feet above the ground; to this the single main trunks of the vine run up, and along it are stretched the two or three arms from which the fruiting-canes hang down. They occupy the least possible space, so that garden crops may be grown practically on the same ground. I have never seen it tried, but where garden space is limited I should think that the asparagus bed and the Kniffen grapearbor just described could be combined to great advantage by placing the vines, in spaces left for them, directly in the asparagus row. Of course the ground would have to be manured for two crops. A 2-8-10
fertilizer is right for the grapes. If using stable manure, apply also potassium fertilizer.

If the old-fashioned arbor is used, the best way is to run the main trunk up over it and cut the laterals back each year to two or three eyes.
The most serious grape trouble which the home gardener is likely to encounter is the black-rot. Where only a few grapes are grown, the simplest way of overcoming this disease is to get a few dozen cheap manila store-bags and fasten one, with a couple of ten-penny nails, over each bunch. Cut the mouth of the bag at sides and edges, cover the bunch, fold the flaps formed over the cane, and fasten.
 They are put on after the bunches are well formed and hasten the ripening of the fruit, as well as protecting it. On a larger scale, spraying will have to be resorted to. Besides the spraying, all trimmed- off wood, old leaves and twigs, withered bunches and grapes, or "mummies," and refuse of every description, should be carefully raked up in the spring and disposed of. Also give clean culture and keep the main stems clean.
The grape completes the list of the small fruits worth while to the average home gardener. If you have not already experimented with them, do not let your garden go any longer without them. They are all easily
obtained, and a very limited number will keep the family table well supplied with healthy delicacies, which otherwise, in their best varieties and condition, could not be had at all. The various operations of setting out, pruning and spraying will soon become as familiar as those in the vegetable garden. There is no reason why every home garden should not have its few rows of small fruits, yielding their delicious harvests in abundance.