Raising Vegetables for Canning 1573 



summer of 191 2 the writer saw the work of the swallows and the martins, 

 which destroyed millons of these insects on his patch of peas. Another 

 method of controlling this pest is to cultivate the peas immediately after a 

 person has gone along the rows and Knocked the insects from the vines; 

 in this way they are buried by the cultivator. 



A disease and its remedy. — Mildew is a whitish or grayish coating generally 

 found on the leaves late in the season and after the weather has become 

 somewhat warm ; the remedy for it is dusting with sulfur the plants that 

 are affected. Peas grown on cool sites are less likely to be troubled with 

 this pest. 



Harvesting. — As soon as the pea pods become filled with seed, the vines 

 should be cut. This may be done with a scythe or a mowing machine. If 

 the latter is used, the vines may be collected in small piles with an ordinary 

 hand rake, and these piles may be combined with a fork into larger ones, 

 which are thrown on a wagon. If peas are raised on a large scale, it 

 would be advisable to own a pea swather for harvesting the crop. The 

 swather lifts the vines with long finger guards, which are placed on the 

 cutter bar; cuts the vines with specially constructed knives, and throws 

 them to one side in a swath. Under favorable conditions ten acres of peas 

 can be harvested per day by this method. The vines should then be 

 collected in wagons and taken from the field to the cannery without 

 delay. 



If peas are grown on a comparatively small scale, they are generally 

 picked from the growing vines by hand into baskets and carried to the 

 house for canning. Care should be taken not to injure the pods or the 

 vines. The average price for picking a bushel of peas by hand varies 

 from fifteen to twenty-five cents according to the labor supply and the 

 heaviness of the yield. If peas are to be held in the pod for any length 

 of time, they should be kept cool, for they heat very quickly. 



Yields. — This crop often yields from fifteen to twenty-five hundred 

 pounds of shelled peas per acre and under very favorable conditions as 

 high as two tons per acre on plantings of one acre or more. The average 

 yield for the garden of less than one acre is from seventy-five to one 

 hundred and fifty bushels of unshelled peas per acre, according to the 

 method of planting and the variety grown. In a garden of less than an 

 acre, a row about one hundred feet long will yield froin one to three bushels 

 of unshelled peas. Canneries pay from two to two and one-half cents 

 a pound for shelled peas. Oftentimes the small gardener will sell the 

 earliest peas for immediate consumption at from one to three dollars a 

 bushel, and after the price has dropped to less than a dollar he will use 

 them for canning purposes. On plantings of more than an acre, the cost 

 of producing an acre of peas for canning varies from thirty to forty-five 



