"That," said the Chief Gardener, "is honeydew, or ant's milk. The ants are very fond of it, and wherever you find these aphides, you will find ants, milking them. In fact, I believe the ants keep these aphides during the winter in some of their houses, and drive them in the spring to tender green feeding-places like these pea-vines, so that the milk will be sweet and plentiful. I have heard that different families of ants have different droves of cows, and fight over them, too."
The children were very much interested in all this, and watched the ants run up and down the vines and milk their cows. Then the Chief Gardener said, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we'll have to get rid of these. They are very bad for young plants, and ants are, too. They suck the juice, and ruin them. I must give them a mixture."
He went into the basement and cut up a few ounces of whale-oil soap, and dissolved it in hot water. Then when it was cool and weakened, he sprinkled the pease with it. The next day all the cows were gone, and most of the ants. But about a week later, just after a shower, there they were again, and the Chief Gardener said that the ants must have driven up a new herd. So he had to sprinkle them again, and even once more before the end of the month; and while he was sprinkling, he sprinkled the little gardens, too, for whale-oil soap when it isn't used strong enough to hurt the young plants is a fine thing for little gardens, and big ones, too.
III THERE ARE MANY WAYS OF PRODUCING SPECIES
Around the house Prue had planted a border of nasturtiums on one side, and a border of marigolds on the other, and they were all coming up and looked as if they would grow into strong, fine plants. Davy had planted some hills of castor beans in the garden, because the Chief Gardener had said that they were good for the three Ms moles, malaria, and mosquitoes. He was also attending very faithfully to a row of strawberries which the Chief Gardener had told him he might have for his own. The little boy was quite skillful with a hoe, and could take care of his vegetables almost as well as the Chief Gardener, so the Chief Gardener thought.
"You must not hoe your beans when the dew is on them, Davy," he said one morning. "The vines are tender and it causes them to rust or blight, but you may hoe most of the other things, and you may hoe around most of your vegetables as often as you want to. Loosening up the soil about young plants makes them grow. It gives the roots a chance to spread, and lets sun and air into the soil. You must be a little more careful with flowers, Prue, for they are usually more tender, and it is better to dig with an old knife or a small, weeding rake. You must thin out your plants, too. Keep pulling from between, as they grow larger, so that they stand farther and farther apart. Where plants grow too thickly they are small, and the flowers and vegetables poor. People sometimes try to raise more on a small piece of ground by having more plants on it, but it does not pay, for the plants do not produce as much as if there were only half as many on the same soil. Give everything plenty of room and air, and they will grow and thrive like children who have a good playground and plenty of wholesome food."
"Papa," said Prue, "you were talking the other day of the different kinds of one thing: what makes them? the different kinds of roses, I mean, and pansies, and "
"And peaches and
apples," interrupted Davy, "I want to know that, too."
The Chief Gardener did not answer just at first. Then he said, "I am afraid that is a pretty big subject for little people. There are a good many ways of producing species of flowers, and some of them are not easy to understand. But I can tell you, perhaps, about the fruits now, and we will try to understand about some of the flowers another time.
"To begin with, the upper part and the lower parts of our fruit-trees are different. The root and a little of the lower stalk is from a seed, and upon this has been grafted or spliced with soft bands and wax, a bud from some choice kind of peach or apple or plum, or whatever the tree is to be, and this new bud grows and forms the tree. Sometimes a bud of the choice kind is merely inserted beneath the bark of another tree and grows and forms a new limb. By and by, when it bears fruit, the fruit will be of the kind that was on the choice tree, but the seed, though it looks just the same, may be altogether different. If a seed like that is planted, it may make a tree like the root part of the one from which it came, or it may make a tree like the upper part, or it may make something different from either one. No one can tell what that seed will bring. So fruit growers plant a great many such seeds each year, and once in a great while some new peach, or apple, or plum, or cherry, finer than anything ever grown before, comes from one of those seeds. Then every little limb of that tree is saved and grafted or spliced to a lot of sturdy little roots that have come from other seeds, and this new kind of fruit goes out all over the world and is grafted, and re-grafted, until there are trees everywhere of the new kind."