Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1876 — Some Suggestions for Planting Small Places. [ARTICLE]

Some Suggestions for Planting Small

Places.

With beginners, and those of limited experience in the art of gardening, there is always a strong desire to rush the work in the garden, have the beds dug and raked, the seeds sown, and the trees and shrubs planted before the frost is well out of the ground, or the soil di-y or warm enough to facilitate vegetation. This natural, but very common, error, to turn over or disturb the ground too soon in the spring not infrequently leads to discouraging results later in the season. Garden seeds, sown too early, while the soil is still cold and wet, are sure to be seriously injured, rottingto many instances before §erminating. This will be found true in egree of fruit-bearing trees as well as garden seeds. I have known of many cases where young pears, apples and cherries were permanently stunted from the very start bv this unwise course of planting when the soil was cold and soggy. On clay land, no more fatal blunder can be made than planting fruit-trees, vines or shrubs, before the soil is in the right condition. Better by far wait two weeks than start one day too soon. If the soil is thrown around the roots when heavy and wet, it soon hardens, encasing the fibers in an impervious cement .which hinders their natural action, and, as a matter of course, checks the growth and vigor of the trees or vines. Early planting in the open ground of vegetables or fruit-trees possesses no other’advantage beyond that of having the work out of the way, and for this the risks run from the causes named are out of all proportion. I have known of instances time and again, even with as hardy a vegetable as the potato, that those planted about the middle of April were ripe and ready for fise one to two weeks in advance of those planted a month earlier, and produced a larger yield—this, too, on the same farm, ana under the same treatment and culture.— Scribner's Monthly.