1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



641 



the best. We had oin' acre that was very rich, 

 but we got large vines and hardly any berries 

 from it. 



There is an orange -tree three miles south of 

 Gainesville, on Alachua Lake, or Paine's Prai- ' 

 rie, as it is called, that, in 1882, bore 18.600 or- 

 anges. A New England man bought them on 

 the tree at 2 cents each. Now figure it up and 

 see if it is not .«372.oo. This tree is at Old Fort 

 Harley; is 75 feet high, and 50 or r,o feet spread 

 of limbs, and has had no cultivation or manure 

 for years. 



If you will look over Gleanings some years 

 back you will find a communication from a 

 man who had been in Florida a few months, 

 condemning the Newnan strawberry. He said 

 it was the poorest of poor berries. Evidently, 

 he is not an A. I. Root kind of man. 



Upper Lake, Cal. G. P. Shires. 



EARLY POTATOES. 



This season we have had an unusual oppor- 

 tunity for testing the comparative earliness 

 and other qualities of the new as well as the 

 old sorts of early potatoes, for the frost cut 

 thera all down to pretty nearly one dead level. 

 Various kinds of potatoes had been brought 

 into the market when one man showed me 

 several bushels so much larger, nicer, cleaner, 

 and handsomer than any thing else, that I ut- 

 tered an exclamation of surprise. Finally I 

 said: 



" Why, my good friend, what kind of potatoes 

 are these? and how did you manage to get 

 them of such size since the frost?" 



"Oh I they were Just coming out of the 

 ground at the time of the frost: and as there 

 was only an eighth of an acre I covered them 

 with straw. Besides, they are Burpee's Extra 

 Early. I have had them two seasons, and I 

 pronounce them the best early potato in the 

 market." 



" Well, these are really Burpee's Extra Early, 

 are they? And you live on clay soil, as I do, 

 so you did not have really the best kind of po- 

 tato ground. How many did you get from that 

 eighth of an acre ? " 



'• Why, there were just about 25 bushels, large 

 and small. Of course, I brought you the best 

 ones." 



After some little urging he said he thought 

 he ought to have about (55 cts. a bushel for the 

 lot. I paid him 70 cts., and felt happy besides, 

 and I guess he did too. Now, friends, here is a 

 yield of 200 bushels of potatoes per acre, of 

 about the handsomest potatoes you ever saw in 

 your life; in fact, they brought 5 cts. a bushel 

 more than he asked, on account of their size 

 and beauty. Is not that money enough to 

 make a man well satisfied? Early as it is, I 

 am going to save these potatoes for seed. I am 

 not afraid to undertake it, because I did the 

 same thing last year. And, by the way, I have 

 a potato-story to tell you. 



On the 2Sth of June, after turning under 

 some Parker Earle strawberries where we had 

 had quite a heavy picking, we planted some 

 Early Ohio and Lee's Favorite potatoes. They 

 had been kept in the cellar, and had not been 

 cared for as they should have been, especially 

 ■during the month of June. Some of the sprouts 

 were six inches long. But I directed the boys 

 to turn the boxes upside down, pour the pota- 



toes out as carefully as they could, then sepa- 

 ate them, letting the roots and sprouts remain 

 on the potatoes as much as possible. Each 

 potato was carefully put into the ground, the 

 sprouts held up and planted as we would plant 

 cabbage-plants. Some one who saw me taking 

 so much pains said the sprouts were no good, 

 and that I had better pull them all off. I knew 

 better, however, for I have for many years 

 tried the same thing. A pretty fair rain fell 

 almost immediately afterward. The white, 

 sickly-looking sprouts gradually turned dark 

 green, and they began to grow. I knew what 

 to expect; but this time the experiment went 

 away beyond my expectations. Let me explain 

 that the strawberries were mulched with coarse 

 stable manure. This manure had produced 

 quite a growth of weeds. Another coating of 

 good manure was put on top of the weeds; and 

 when we plowed, a man had to help put the 

 stuff all under. We have a good plow, how- 

 ever, and the boys made a good job of both the 

 plowing and the marking. The marker, how- 

 ever, which is Darnell's furrower, came so near 

 tearing up the trash underneath that we cov- 

 ered them by hand. Well, before July was out 

 these potatoes were knee-high, almost cover- 

 ing the ground, and some of them in blossom, 

 and about the handsomest stand of potatoes 

 you ever saw. Not a bug has ever touched 

 them, and there are very few punctures from 

 the flea-beetle. Of course, there is no symptom 

 of blight. When I told people that that big 

 stand of potatoes had been in the ground less 

 than 30 days I almost feared they would think 

 I was becoming reckless in my yarns about 

 high-pressure gardening. The little patch is 

 really an astonishment to everybody. With so 

 much manure they may be scabby: but from 

 similar experiments made in late planting I 

 hardly think they are. 



Now. when you have some potatoes left, 

 and they get great long sprouts on, and become 

 in consequence so soft that almost anybody 

 would pronounce them unfit for eating or any 

 thing else, just remember this experiment and 

 see what you can do along in the same line. It 

 takes some work to put them out properly, 1 

 know; but it is only just a little more labor in 

 planting; and less labor, in fact, through all 

 after-cultivation, for the potatoes are ahead of 

 the weeds: and. more than that, ahead of the 

 bugs, and usually ahead of the blight. 



SUB -IRRIGATION VS. TOMATO ROT. 



Some time last fall Ernest decided that he 

 wanted a water-closet in his bath-room. As 

 the house stands a little higher than a part of 

 the ground we use for market-gardening, I told 

 him I would dispose of the sewage and water 

 for him, without expense. Ordinary sewer- 

 pipe, cemented at the joints, was used to carry 

 the sewage down as far as the dividing-line 

 between his ground and mine. Then it was 

 turned into six-inch tiles. Each tile was one 

 foot long, and they were buried from 20 inches 

 to 2 feet below the surface of the ground, with 

 the joints left a little loose. They ran down a 

 pretty good incline under the pie-plant roots 

 and other plants, for 30 or 40 feet, crossing 

 diagonally three or four of my underdraining- 

 tiles. Then we closed the opening, and cover- 

 ed the whole with earth. He felt uneasy about 

 it, thinking the tiles might fill up, and back up 

 so as to hinder the proper passing-away of the 

 sewage. I told him the draining-tiles would 

 carry away all the liquid portion, and that the 

 roots of the plants would go down through the 

 tiles, and dispose of all the rest. The appara- 

 tus has worked perfectly ever since, right 

 through winter and summer. For some time, 

 however, I did not observe the effect on plants 



