they crave—bone meal or some of the ground phosphatic rock. But when it comes to maturing seed—that is, to making frut—even this will not be enough, for it is potash, as the table shows very plainly, which helps along the plant at this particular time and part of its work. So all three are necessary, you see, for the garden’s general welfare. But where flowers especially are to be fed, phosphoric acid is always the thing most needed. Hence ground bone is the one thing most commonly in use in greenhouses and by florists, and the one thing that all flower gardeners should have at hand.
The green fertilizer which we have spoken about, and which is one of the things that contains a great deal of nitrogen, furnishes a very slow way of doing things, and one you will not care about trying right away, I expect. But it is one of the very best methods that there is of treating a large tract of land; and when you grow up to be a farmer (?), you will, of course, want to know about it! So I may as well tell you here. It is raising a crop of clover, soy-beans, cow-peas, or any kind of legume on it (a legume is a plant whose seeds are contained in a pod that splits open into two pieces, just as bean-pods or pea-pods do), letting this crop grow to maturity, and blossom, and form its rich mealy seeds; and then plowing or spading it under, vine, seeds, and all! This takes down into the soil a very great amount of nitrogen, which this particular kind of plant stores up in large quantities in its seeds and even in its roots, besides the humus, or vegetable mold, of the stalks and roots—and humus is most desirable, because it helps retain moisture in the ground, and makes the soil light and porous, so that roots can penetrate it easily. This is one reason why stable manure ought always to be used when working over the ground, even though some chemical fertilizer is to be added later. The tiny particles of broken up straw and hay in it all disintegrate and become humus. Never put manure onto the lawn, however, nor onto the surface of the ground anywhere, for it is always full of weed seeds, and these will overrun everything in no time at all, ruining the turf and making the garden a perfect plague-spot. Use it only when the early work of turning over the soil is going on, so that it can be turned under the surface by spading or plowing. Then these wretched little seeds will be buried so deep, they simply cannot sprout,
Use generally for flowers a combination of just the ground hone and sulphate of potash, leaving out nitrogen altogether, except for that which the manure, used in making the beds in the beginning, furnishes to them. Use four parts of the bone to one part of the potash, and be sure that they are well mixed, This mixture you can then put on the ground at the rate of one ounce to every four square feet of bed or border or garden space of any kind. If you have no way of weighing it, measure it with a table-spoon. It takes about a table-spoonful and a half to make an ounce—perhaps a little less, but this is near enough. Thus, for a border two feet wide and ten feet long, which will contain twenty square feet, it would take five ounces, or seven and one-half table-spoonfuls.
This is usually put on in the spring, but the ground can be lightly stirred up around the plants at any time with a small hand weeder, and an application made if they seem to need it. I am putting it now around some lilac bushes that did not blossom this year, so they may feast on it while they are growing and making preparations for next summer. They shall have some more in the fall too, just as they are going to sleep, enough to leave some for breakfast the first thing next spring.
You will often hear about using lime in the soil, and you must know what this does and why it is necessary, even though it is not a direct food for plants, as the other things are. First of all, it sweetens the soil—sil can be very sour, you know, just the same as anything else, and some plants detest sour soil—and then it acts directly upon the little dirt particles that make up the soil, so that where these are small and packed close, as in heavy clay, they separate and lie farther apart; and the clay becomes consequently lighter, and we call it more “friable,” that is, it crumbles or breaks up into powder easily; and where they are coarse and far apart, as in sandy soil, they somehow break up and fit closer together, thus making the soil more dense, and changing its texture to a loam. So once in a while the garden beds and borders ought to have lime—every third or fourth year, perhaps; and this should always be put in when the ground is broken up, before planting. Use two to eight ounces for every four square feet—that is, from four to sixteen table-spoonfuls, for lime weighs a little less than ground bone, and it takes, therefore, a little more to make an ounce. A border two feet wide and ten feet long would need ten to forty ounces, or twenty to eighty table-spoonfuls—which is quite a job of measuring, is it not? The larger amount is for heavy clay; the smaller for light, sandy soil; and you will find it easy to tell the middle kinds, between clay and sand, that will need from twenty to thirty ounces, or a pound and a half, roughly speaking. You will not have to be as exact about any of these things911
