SWEET PEA CULTURE FROM A COMMERCIAL STANDPOINT. 231 
Early sweet peas, though requiring a good deal of labor, are not difficult 
to raise. We start them in the house or under glass early enough to get 
good growth. The vines, unless the weather after planting out is unusual- 
ly favorable, are of no value, but a good root ready for work eight to twelve 
inches deep in good soil will soon furnish vines, buds and blossoms. These 
’. transplanted peas are in no danger from the first pest of the sweet pea 
grower, the cutworm, but it is on these that the red spider, or rather the 
grey mite, begins its ravages when the hot weather begins. Perhaps we take 
them from the house. I know they flourish there, and I do not know if they 
survive our winters outside. Early and deep planting, rich soil and plenty of 
water seem to be the requisites for long stems and free blossoming, that is 
necessary for the market pea. We trench deep, eighteen inches or more, put 
several inches of manure in the bottom of the trench, plant so the seed will 
be six inches deep when the trench is filled, but do not cover so deep until 
it is up, filling in as it grows; trellis, seven feet high, higher if they need it. 
I like tall vines. They are not so easy to pick but better in every other 
sense. 
With the hot weather come plenty of blossoms, and soon our troubles be- 
gin, Blasted buds, mildew and neck drop are the most difficult to gvercome. 
Two or three scorching days will open a whole week’s blossoms at one time, 
and lucky are we if it culminates on Saturday, when everything will sell, 
for we must take short stems and scant flowers for several days. 
Dry weather we can meet with water, or if warm as well as dry you can 
scarcely give too much; but hot weather, especially if windy, is ruin. 
But little land is required for sweet peas, but the labor is endless. During 
the blossoming season our work begins with daylight, and we pick as many 
as possible before the sun is hot, rarely picking after ten o’clock except on 
Saturday, when we make two pickings. Then hoeing, watering, spraying, 
take the rest of the day. The spring is fully occupied in planting, trellising 
and cultivating, and the fall is never long enough to clear up, open trenches 
and get ready for spring. 
When I began to sell sweet peas four years ago, the Blanche Ferry 
was the popular pea here, outselling three to one all other varieties; next 
year less than a third of my peas will be Ferrys, and my list will contain 
every good one I know of, probably thirty varieties. 
The market here is limited, easily over-stocked, but its worst element is 
one of our largest growers who sets the price for all the rest, and whose 
idea of the proper retail price seems to be ten cents a hundred. Her flowers 
are sold by boys on the streets, and I never know them to ask more than 
twenty cents per hundred for the first. When we are getting fifty or even 
twenty-five at wholesale, we naturally dread the appearance of these boys. 
Now I have some questions to ask, and hope to get an answer to at least 
a part of them. 
Why do my vines grow best by the stakes that support the trellis? Is it 
air or water or both? Can TI prevent mildew? What causes a whole crop 
of buds to turn yellow and drop? We expect some blasted buds early when 
the weather is extremely varicble and just after the first full blossoming, 
but last year I had three rows, about fifteen feet long, of the finest peas 
I ever saw, bright, clean, thrifty vines, plenty of long stemmed flowers and 
full of buds. One afternoon I saw that the buds did not look just right, and 
next morning when picking was finished three-fourths of the buds were 
on the ground, and the rest nearly all dropped that day. They went right on 
