1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



569 



sewer-pipes all over his forty acres. The four- 

 inch stream pours out on, say, half an acre at 

 a time. When this half-acre is thoroughly 

 soaked he puts it on the next one, and so on. 

 Whenever the ground gets dry enough the cul- 

 tivators are kept going, and the whole thing is 

 working like a charm. His five-inch sewer- 

 pipes, good quality of seconds, cost him only a 

 cent and a half a foot. He manages to dispense 

 with expensive valves by plugging the openings 

 with a wooden plug held in place by bolts on a 

 U-shaped yoke. In fact, our friend Atwood has, 

 at comparatively small expense, worked out and 

 got into actual practice the best irrigating- 

 plant I ever saw anywhere. 



Now a little advice to those who are thinking 

 about irrigating. A windmill may answer for 

 small areas — say a quarter or half an acre; but 

 for a whole acre you will want a big windmill 

 and a big tank for storage. But you want lots 

 of water to do the work right. During a severe 

 drouth, such as we had in May, sprinkling 

 water on top of mucky ground is apt to do 

 harm rather than good; and even letting water 

 on through an inch hose is slow work, and 

 answers for only a small area; but with a 

 stream coming out of a four-inch pipe you can 

 flood the ground, and make it soak in clear to 

 the roots of the plants. The forty acr«s of 

 muck land I have mentioned has a very little 

 slope, so that, by taking water on at the high- 

 est point, it can be made to run over the whole 

 surface. I should have said, looking at the 

 ground at the time I was there, it was almost 

 too wet. Friend Atwood says it is the way 

 celery wants to be kept to do its level best. As 

 one approaches the grounds and gets a glimpse 

 of it from the hill, it looks almost like an en- 

 chanted land instead of a reality. The straight 

 rows,* running away off in the distance, look 

 like slender threads of gold, especially where 

 the Golden Self-blanching is planted. Then 

 the White Plume would make silver threads, 

 contrasting beautifully with the other; and 

 the Giant Pascal with its deep dark green, and 

 larger, and of more robust growth, comes in 

 again to delight the eye and please the lover of 

 high-pressure gardening. Friend Atwood has 

 been constantly increasing his acreage ever 

 since he started, and his celery has always gone 

 oflf at good prices; and, if I am correct, the sup- 

 ply has never been equal to the demand, espe- 

 cially during the winter months. At present 

 they have found the safest method of winter- 

 ing to be the open air. With their great quan- 

 tities of muck that can easily be kept dry for fa- 

 cility in handling during the winter months; i.e., 

 it is kept dry by letting the water olT through 

 the drain-tiles — they get a complete protection 

 from frost, and are never troubled with rot. 

 This land, I presume, would not have brought 

 $5.00 an acre a few years ago; but now I doubt 

 whether it could be bought for $200 an acre. 



FOURTH OF .JULY, AND HIGH-PRESSURE GAR- 

 DENING AND FARMING. 



You may inquire what these have to do with 



*To secure rows so absolutely straig-ht as they do 

 on celery-farms, a small rope— say sometliing- like a 

 clotlies-llne, or larger if you choose — is stretched 

 from one end of the field to the other. Then a 

 roller, heavy enough to make the ground smooth 

 and solid, is run over tlie rope, and the plants are 

 set in the print this rcjpe makes in the ground. The 

 hard rolled surfjice also makes a nice place to walk 

 on while you are setting the plants. After the 

 plants are set, flooding them with water makes a 

 sure thing of an even stand. I believe that some- 

 times, when the weather is exceedingly hot, the 

 plants are shaded by one-foot hoards held up by a 

 piece of drain tile at each end of the board and one 

 in the middle. As these boards are used afterward 

 for bleaching the celery, they are always near by, 

 ready for use. 



each other. Well, only this: I have for six 

 months past been trying to get time to visit 

 friend Terry, rL,y cousin Wilbur Fenn, and 

 some of the other progressive men in that di- 

 rection; and when it was decided that we 

 should stop all work on the Fourth, and "shut 

 up shop," letting every one celebrate and enjoy 

 himself after his own fashion, I decided to take 

 mine with a wheel-ride; and I commenced cel- 

 ebrating about 3 o'clock on the afternoon of 

 the 3d. You know I always take a new route 

 where I can do so conveniently, so as to see 

 more " homes " and meet with more adventures. 

 So this time I got lost as usual, and did not 

 find myself until I was unexpectedly in sight of 

 friend Crawford's. Even though it was nearly 

 sundown I stopped to take a look at his berries. 

 I wished especially to see if the runnerless 

 strawberry on friend Crawford's grounds was 

 an ever-bearer, as mentioned on page 573. Sure 

 enough, it had some berries on, but they were 

 not as small as raspberries, after all, and the 

 plants did not come from friend Goldsborough, 

 but from a man by the name of Niman, in 

 Texas. It had put out blossoms, and ripened 

 fruit of fair size and good flavor since my pre- 

 vious visit. Their potato onions had, in conse- 

 quence of the dry weather, ripened up and 

 matured a small crop almost before July came 

 in. The white-top onions were also going to 

 be a failure, or pretty nearly so, so far as get- 

 ting top sets of any size was concerned. 



I reached friend Terry's just as it was getting 

 dusk. His automatic watering-device I found 

 close by the roadside, and there it was doing 

 duty, sure enough. The water (regulated by a 

 float) always stands just so high in the trough, 

 no matter how many cattle go there to drink; 

 and not a drop of water is wasted during this 

 dry time. The water comes from a spring on 

 higher ground, four or five rods away. His po- 

 tatoes this year are the New Queen, Irish Daisy, 

 and the Freeman, with a few other sorts for 

 testing. The Freeman, although an early po- 

 tato, is making a much better show than any 

 of the others. I could not see a trace of blight; 

 the stand was very perfect and even. The 

 leaves were thrifty, and of a bright green. 

 Although his clover was the best I had seen la 

 either Medina, Summit, or Portage Counties, it 

 was having a rather tough time of it. 



The succession of dry seasons we have been 

 having is doing much to encourage opening up 

 the low mucky grounds throughout Ohio, and 

 some important facts are coming to light. In 

 the potato-field adjoining Terry's, a valuable 

 fact shows clear out in the road to the passers- 

 by. Half of the field was planted with potatoes 

 raised on upland, and kept hard and firm by 

 being buried on Terry's plan until the time of 

 planting. The other half of the field was 

 planted with potatoes not as good, grown on 

 muck land. The muck seed gave ever so much 

 the best stand, and the potatoes are now away 

 ahead of the others. I believe it is generally 

 considered that potatoes grown on low muck 

 ground are not as good for table use; but I 

 think I have heard before that they were just 

 as good to plant, or even better. It is often 

 claimed that potatoes for seed raised on some 

 other farm or some other ground are better 

 than those raised on the same piece of ground. 



I found Walter Atwooa (brother to the one 

 who has the celery-farm) cultivating his gar- 

 den. A row of tomatoes containing green fruit 

 almost full size attracted my attention. " Sure- 

 ly these haven't grown to this stage since the 

 frost?" He replied that they were carried 

 safely through the frost by being covered with 

 a double thickness of burlap. Where only a 

 single thickness was used, the plants were more 

 or less injured. Well, half the row showed 



