VEGETABLES. 865 
GARDEN VEGETABLES---A GREATER VARIETY AND 
CHOICER KINDS. 
Cc. L. HILL, ALBERT LEA. 
When you visit the garden of the average farmer, you are less apt 
to be struck with what you find there than with what you fail to find. 
The thing likely to impress you is the fact that any one should be 
willing to do without so many vegetable luxuries that might be 
growing in abundance at his door. The great need of our gar- 
dens is a greater variety and choicer kinds. 
Every year,early in their season, we see piles of tender asparagus, 
green onions, lettuce and radishes at the market places for the use 
of the town’s people. But do our farmers have them in abundance? 
We who till the soil are surely entitled to its best gifts, and are in 
position to obtain them so much easier than are our city friends, 
and may have them in so much fresher, better condition. 
The cabbage is so common that it has becomea prominent feature 
in the sameness of the garden patches along the country roads; but 
its cousin, the cauliflower, a much superior vegetable, is rarely seen 
there. Yetit is a hardy plant, and we may have it in all its crispy 
freshness for the simple outlay of a few hours of labor and the ex- 
pense of a few seed. Yes, the seed are high-priced I know, and that 
is the bugbear with some of us. Buta few seed go a long ways,and 
what are left over are good for the next year. 
Egg plant is almost unknown in the farm gardens of Minnesota, 
but for no good reason that I am able to see. The Early Dwarf Pur- 
ple will mature in this climate and be ready for the table by the 
first of August. It thrives in our rich soil and yields abundantly, 
It is a plant, too, that will stand a good deal of drought—a thing in 
its favor we are all prepared to appreciate. We may save our own 
seed, so the expense is only that of labor after getting a start. 
The varieties of beans for the garden are almost numberless. 
Among them all, none is superior to the rich limas when taken 
fresh from the bush. If too much trouble to get poles for the run- 
ning varieties, we now have three or four limas that need no poles. 
The largest of these, Burpee’s Bush lima,is really a fine bean. It 
needs a season rather longer than ours in which to do its best; but 
I have had no difficulty in getting the beans to ripen perfectly for 
seed, during the past three years. Henderson’s Bush lima is a 
smaller bean; but I believe it to be somewhat hardier and a few days 
earlier than Burpee’s. 
The ground cherry finds place in some of our gardens only as a 
troublesome weed. But there is an improved variety that yields a 
fine fruit, and which it pays well to cultivate. Here is a vegetable 
fruit well adapted to our climate and one worthy of attention and 
improvement through our horticultural society. 
The different kinds of melons do not receive half the attention 
they deserve. Hundreds of car-loads are shipped into our state 
every summer, when we might easily grow our own melons. Tome 
there is no great degree of satisfaction in the large, coarse-grained 
melon that was picked green and has been shipped one or two hun- 
dred miles, bruised in handling, broiled in the sun and held in 
