SECRETAEY'S PORTFOLIO. 467 



ing up greensward. Flat turnips may be sown among them at the last hoeing, 

 and make a fair crop after the frost has killed the vines. 



The pickles are preserved for winter and spring sale *by salting ; molasses 

 hogshead answer very well for one year, but the wooden hoops soon break. 

 Linseed oil casks are better, but more expensive, and I know one large estab- 

 ilshment where the pickles are all salted in cisterns underground, built of brick 

 and cement. The brine for salting pickles must be strong enough to float a 

 potato; if a little stronger it will do no harm, but if too strong it will wilt the 

 pickles and injure them. They must be kept carefully under the brine, and 

 the brine should be drawn off and poured over them two or three times within 

 the first week after they are salted, otherwise they get too fresh on top and 

 spoil. The brine will ferment slightly, but this does no harm. Watch them 

 often to make sure the brine covers them all, and keep a little brine on the 

 cover for the first week. Peppers, beans, cauliflowers, etc., are salted in the 

 same manner for mixed pickles. When wanted for sale, the pickles are scooped 

 out of the brine with a common fisherman's dip-net, placed in fresh water, 

 which must be changed to or three times a day till the pickles are quite fresh. 

 If a stream of fresh water can be made to flow through them, all the better. 

 When quite fresh they are taken out of the water and placed directly in vine- 

 gar, which may be spiced with pickled peppers, or West India peppers, or all- 

 spice, or with anything else the trade demands. With vinegar at fifteen cents 

 per gallon, you ought to be able to make pickles at a profit. The white wine 

 or whisky vinegar mostly used for the purpose, costs about twenty to twenty- 

 five cents per gallon. 



Squash Culture. — Henry Stewart says that squash enjoy heavier and 

 moister soil than the melon and cucumber tribe, and the most loamy field or 

 corner, where the moisture is long retained, either naturally or by the most 

 thorough cultivation, should be chosen for it. It is also a profuse glutton, 

 and will not object to take a whole compost heap for its individual property, 

 so that the soil should be prepared by plowing in as much manure as can be 

 secured, as a beginning, to be supplemented by a liberal supply in the hill, 

 and an additional sprinkling of rich fertilizer on the surface. "Nothing 

 comes of nothing," and if the crop is given nothing it simply gives it back 

 again, and although the squash is a succulent vegetable, yet its seeds, its 

 flesh, and even its rind, are remarkably rich in all the elements which are 

 abundantly found only in rich soils. And therefore if one would have 

 squashes one must feed the soil well. 



Squashes need a good deal of room, and we would put the hills nine feet 

 apart. It pays to make these hills special storehouses of food for the plant. 

 At nine feet apart there are 540 hills to the acre, and giving forty pounds of 

 manure to the hill, in addition to fifteen loads plowed in, would require 

 about twenty-five loads to the acre. This manure is more easily spread by 

 dropping the manure from the cart or wagon at every nine feet each way, and 

 carefully keeping them in line. A load will make twenty-two heaps of about 

 one hundred pounds to the heap; a little more than half of this is spread 

 towards the outside of the square, and the rest is spread thickly at each 

 center. By plowing the manure under in narrow lands or ridges and mark- 

 ing the cross lines, we get the places for the hills and save all spade work in 

 digging in manure. 



Rather late planting is desirable so as to get the various insect pests at 



