^44 ANNUAL REPORT 



VEaETABLE GARDEN. 



In the vegetable garden I was victimized by one of our West- 

 ern seed firms whose senior member I had known for merit some 

 years ago in a single specialty, and whom I trusted last year for 

 my entire order of garden seeds. I planted and tilled with the 

 intention of aiding our county fair with a large line of choice and 

 showy products. A pound of "giant" mangel seed yielded 

 two kinds of sugar beets, two kinds of turnip beets, a long blood 

 beet, one or two kinds of globe beets, and not a single mangel 

 wurzel in the lot. A neighbor raised a similar lot from seed 

 obtained from the same firm, and entered them at the county 



fair as " Giant Mangel Wurzels" because the paper 



of seeds said so, and gave the firm the benefit of the advertising. 

 Of course the judges recognized the joke, and rejected the entry. 

 "Danver's half long" carrot seed yielded about every sort of 

 carrot except Danver's half-long. Pickling onions were more 

 than half scullions, good large ones. Several other sorts of 

 onion seed might have been true to name, all through, and of 

 fair stock in the days of their youth. I can not speak for the 

 dead seed. The few live ones were all right. A barrel of six 

 kinds of potatoes were all of one sort except a few accidental 

 scatterings of unnamM sorts. And so on —"the cankerings of a 

 calm world and a long peace" served me right; I should have 

 known better than to have bought of a seedsman who attaches 

 his own name to almost every seed in his catalogue and who 

 flames out with gaudy pictures of vegetable impossibilities. 

 Hereafter I want a plain catalogue; and in our local farmers' 

 meeting here, where we discuss such things during the winter 

 months, we will make a black list of seedsmen and — may I be 

 permitted to say it in this presence — of nurserymen who cheat 



us. 



Of several sorts I save m;f own seeds. Excelsior watermelon, 

 of successive years' selection, mixed with the Stokes, still heads 

 my list for size and quality, productiveness and earliuess; 

 planted the middle of May, they commence ripening not later 

 than the twentieth of August, average about twenty pounds 

 weight, and yield many above thirty pounds. .We never get a 

 poor Excelsior melon; they continue ripening till frost comes, 

 and are good keepers. The Stokes is not equaled for quality 

 when the season is favorable for its growth, and is fairly pro- 

 ductive. The cross between these two, I spoke of last year, 



