This section is from the book "The American Garden Vol. XI", by L. H. Bailey. Also available from Amazon: American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.
A Witness of Passing Events, and a Record of Progress. By L. H. Bailey. Pp. 249; cuts, 52. Rural Publishing Co., New York. Among the new books of a horticultural nature there is none which contains, inside of 250 pages, more good, practical sense and valuable information than the Annals of Horticulture for 1889. It comes as a fruit of the past year, containing nearly all that is new in the way of horticultural information. It is crisp, fresh, juicy, and full of the aroma of common sense. There seems to be no rotten specks in it, and I think it not only serves a good purpose now, but it will do to keep, and will show just what the year 1889 brought us in the way of good things. May succeeding volumes be as good ! - H. E. Van Deman. How to Make the Garden Pay. By T. Greiner. Pp. 272. Illustrated. Philadelphia: William Henry Maule. This is a good book. The author has cut loose from the old methods of treating the vegetable garden, and has presented a volume which is novel in design. He appears to have copied fewer of the old blunders and less of the stereotyped expressions than any of the recent writers. He has made more than a mere alphabetical catalogue of garden vegetables with notes of a few leading varieties and leading points of culture.
Over one-half of the book is devoted to matters of detail, which every gardener should know before he undertakes the culture of any vegetable. He devotes chapters to requirements for success in market gardening, to hints on marketing, irrigation, garden implements, cold frames, hot-beds, forcing-houses, drainage, insects, fungous diseases and the like. His three chapters upon manures and fertilizers for the vegetable garden are the best which have been written in this country in a garden hand-book. The author has drawn well upon the practical science of the day, and wherever he has quoted, has done so to good advantage. The book is never overdrawn or inflated ; it does not hold out glaring inducements ; and so far as we have seen, is never misleading. The chapter on fungi is entirely inadequate to the subject, even for a concise hand-book of this size, and there are some other points where perhaps a little more fullness would have been better. But the author's brevity in certain places may come from his desire to be eminently self-constrained, for he graciously informs us that the book is not written by a professor of horticulture, and is therefore "plain, practical common-sense, without useless flourishes and poetic ornamentation".
 
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