Readers’ Corner Letter Contest
Here is this month’s prizewinner in our Readers’ Corner contest for the best letter on converting someone into a gardener. This is the third and last in the series.
We wish there was room to print all the delightful and moving letters we’ve received.
Dear Editor:
I came as a bride to a new little bungalow set down in the middle of a barren plot. Even the topsoil had been taken away,
The packet of zinnia seeds I planted hopefully in the hard, gravelly ground came up scantily and stood still in a dejected row.
“If I had just a little green spot to rest my eyes when I look out the kitchen window,” I said repeatedly.
My husband had always thought flowers were pretty and let it go at that. But to please me, I finally set out to create that bit of green I longed for.
There was little money to spend on landscaping, so he turned to the native materials at hand and, from the first, seemed to have a knack for successfully transplanting from fields, streams, and woods the lovely wild things that grew in plenty nearby.
First, he made a tiny pool, cementing the sides and bottom and placing the prettiest of our field stones around the edge. Then we planted Iow-growing flowers around the irregular circle.
Into the pool went a water lily and a cattail plant. Then, beside the pool, we planted two slender wands of a fast-growing willow.
As we stood together surveying his work, we both felt a glow of achievement. He had converted a bare, ugly spot into a miniature oasis, and I had converted him into a willing gardener.
That was the modest beginning of a hobby that has lasted through 20 satisfying years and which has filled every inch of our ground with growing things that give in abundance the contentment which has enriched our happiness as the years pass.
- (Mrs.) ELVA M. HUGHES, South Seaville.
Root Cuttings
Dear Editor:
I once had a neighbor who claimed she didn’t know a thing about gardening. However, she seemed to make things grow by just sticking them in the ground.
Then, by chance, I learned her secret. One day I saw her turn an empty fruit jar over a rose cutting, and I knew. Six months later, that rose had bloomed on it.
I decided that I could do that, so whenever I put a fuchsia, rose, or geranium cutting out in the open ground, I put a jar over it.
I found they were rooted in much less time, and the percentage of successful attempts was much higher.
Since then, I have started hard-to-root plants like camellias, eugenia, and daphne in pots with a quart jar set down over the cutting. Kept in a sunny window, the heat is reasonably constant.
The jar holds most of the moisture, and the pots need to be watered only when vapor ceases to collect on the sides of the jar.
I have since used glass jars – miniature greenhouses – to protect young tomato plants or other garden plants when frost is predicted.
- Mrs. G. DARWIN HEAVY, Salinas, Calif.
Pointers’ Correction
Dear Editor:
In the July issue of FLOWER GROWER, we encountered what is probably a typographical error and wish to call it to your attention.
In Mr. P. J. McKenna’s “July Pointers,” ammonium sulfate is recommended for eradicating poison ivy. Undoubtedly, ammonium sulfamate was intended as this chemical is recognized as the outstanding control for poison ivy.
As you know, ammonium sulfamate is the active ingredient of Du Pont “Animate” Weed Killer which is recommended by trade name in the feature article on poison ivy in your June issue.
Since ammonium sulfamate is available to consumers only as the proprietary produCt “Ammate,” it is suggested that the trade name be included in discussing this chemical weed killer.
Ammonium sulfate being well known to gardeners because of its fertilizer value, should not be used around poison ivy as it may help the growth and certainly will not eradicate the plants.
For this reason, you may wish to correct the error.
– D. E. ROSEN, Retail Products Division, E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Del.
Flower Grower Fan
Dear Editor:
Recently I happily chanced upon your excellent magazine. I have read it from cover to cover and can hardly wait for the latest copy. Our work at the Catholic Boys Guidance Centre is with boys who need help.
We have 40 lads living with us all the time and maintain a good-sized outpatient department.
In work, we always try to hold up the beauty in life as a goal for which to strive. I can think of a few things that can strikingly show the beauty about us, as can the beauty of gardens. We have 28 acres of ground which we use as a camp in the summertime.
We have worked hard and managed to put the camp in good condition after three summers and are now trying to increase the spot’s natural beauty.
In that regard, your publication has been a great source of encouragement and an excellent source of material through which we may learn and also through which we can contact various firms which can help us with our plans for the future at the camp.
Enclosed, please find my subscription to your magazine. Keep us and our work in your kind thoughts.
– The REV. JOHN E. GUINEY, Boston, Mass.
Rabbits Versus Plants
Dear Editor:
Rabbits are fond of tender plants. I have found that blood meal or dried blood scattered over the flower beds will keep them away. They just don’t like it.
– AUGUSTA KNAPP, Bradford, Pa.
Floral Vacation Diary
Dear Editor:
A clever way to keep a sort of floral diary of your summer trip is to collect and press a variety of flowers, foliage, and grasses, either wild specimens or those from your friends’ gardens. Then, if you have room in your car or bag, carry along a large mail-order catalog.
It is ideal for slipping specimens between its pages, and it will hold an abundance of material. Fasten stems to the catalog pages with bits of Scotch tape so plants stay in place.
Keep a heavy weight on the catalog whenever possible for better pressing. For example, your bags might be stacked on top of it in the car.
When you arrive home, remove the dried and pressed material from the catalog and assemble it into bouquets for wall pictures or pictures under glass on trays and table tops.
You’ll be reminded of your trip and the places you visited and collected each pretty flower or leaf.
You might make an old-fashioned “yard of pansies” like the narrowly framed pictures hanging over double doors, arranging them on a background of blending grasses and foliage in grandmother’s old frame or a reasonable facsimile.
Although pansies are my favorite pressed flowers, I have found that the thick flowerheads of scabiosa, especially the variety Black Prince, are unusually striking and effective in pressed arrangements.
– MRS. HARRY YOST, Maxwell, Neb.
Flowers and Friendship
Dear Editor:
I have always loved flowers of every kind and managed to raise a few no matter where I lived. Then, five years ago, my husband and I bought a little bungalow in the suburbs with a nice yard. I was in seventh heaven.
Even the first year, I had so many flowers that in the fall, people would stop on the way to the hospital or cemetery and ask me if I would sell them a bouquet.
I thought I would use the money from the bouquets to buy more seeds and plants, as I could not afford to spend a great deal on the garden from our family income.
A neighbor of mine, whose yard is just back of ours, had some nice chrysanthemums. One day I had more requests than I could fill, so I went to her and suggested we pool our flowers and split our profits. So we did, and in that beginning, a beautiful friendship and a successful hobby grew.
We have turned our places into flower gardens. We have the joy of raising our flowers in our spare time. We share in everything and make up our orders together.
Although our places are small and we cannot have a hothouse, we still have all we can do during summer.
We sell our flowers very reasonably so that people who love them but don’t have much money can afford a bouquet.
– (Mrs.) C. M. FRYE, Baltimore, Md.
Memorial Greenhouse
Dear Editor:
I thought readers might be interested in my memorial greenhouse. I have a window greenhouse in the basement of our house.
In it and our yard are over 40 different plants and shrubs that friends, neighbors, and loved ones have given us, some as long ago as 40 years. I have perpetuated these plants and can name the givers.
These plants include begonias, double hibiscus, shrimp plant, violets, baby’s-tears, amaryllis, and geraniums. I also have a lemon tree from which we have had lemons for use.
– Mrs. THOMAS HINTON, Georgetown, Ill.
Mare Rampant Rogues
Dear Editor:
Mistflower, Eupatorium coelestinum is one of the most rampant rogues for us, and New England asters are more of a problem than hollyhocks. We have a sunflower that will be with us always.
Anemone japonica practically took over a friend’s garden, but someone always seems to be asking for roots from our garden, and it can be kept within bounds.
Eryngium amethystinum and physostegia, we found problem children and discarded them. Bocconia cordata, banished to the farthest corner, stays in bounds now that we cut every stalk. It does fine service for big arrangements for the church and our terrace.
I thought it might be fun to plant a border of rampaging huskies and watch them struggle. It would probably be an unpleasant tangle, but there would be no spraying, dusting, fertilizing, and weeding, and all the usual replacements would be unnecessary.
We once had a border to which we relegated the things we did not want in the garden proper for one reason or another.
Naturally, it was called Siberia. Strange to say, it now often has the most bloom of any spot. So now we put them along the outside of the alley fence to the delight of our neighbors.
There’s quite a collection of the older hemerocallis, iris, and chrysanthemums out there.
– ARTHUR WRIGHT JONES, Granville, Ohio.
1947 Issues Wanted
Dear Editor:
I am a boy 13 years old and plan to be a florist, and I wouldn’t miss a FLOWER GROWER for almost anything. Recently a subscriber sent me back issues from 1940 to 1946.
I certainly have enjoyed these and would like to have the January, February, March, April, July, and September 1947 issues if any readers have them. I have all the rest after these.
For the covers, I like the close-ups and not the homes, as we can see homes in other magazines. I am now having a small lean-to greenhouse built.
– ELVIN McDonald, Gray, Okla.
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