490 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15. 



pie in their estimate of Milton's Paradise Lost; 

 but I never knew that any body of Christian 

 people considered its influence any thing at all 

 like the influence of a Sunday-school book. I 

 never found it in a Sunday-school library, and 

 I should consider it out of place there; yet, my 

 dear friend, does it not depend much upon the 

 way in which we use the book? If we read it 

 loving righteousness and hating iniquity, we 

 may find many good lessons in it; if, however, it 

 is iniquity that we are after, and not righteous- 

 ness, then Paradise Lost would be a bad book. 

 It had better be kept on an upper shelf, or not 

 kept at all. All we know of Satan, or the 

 prince of darkness, is what we derive from the 

 Bible — that is, as to whether he has an exist- 

 ence as an invisible being, etc. It seems to me 

 that the Bible plainly teaches this. If to oth- 

 ers, however, it means only an evil impulse. I do 

 not know that there can be any serious objec- 

 tion. The moral is just the same. We are to 

 fight evil impulses and evil suggestions. We 

 are to put down inclination, and let duty and 

 wisdom take its place; or, as we have it in Holy 

 Writ, "Resist the Devil, and he will flut- from 

 you.'" 



High-pressure Gardening. 



BY A. I. ROOT. 



GARDENING IN JUNE. 



Dear me! what a topic to talk about! Every 

 thing now is under high pressure. We have 

 been selling the American Pearl onions for 

 about a week. As this is the third season they 

 have wintered successfully in our locality, we 

 must call it a success. More than that, several 

 have succeded in wintering over the onions from 

 seed sown in August. A neighbor sowed quite 

 a lot of seed about the 15th of last August; and 

 a few days ago he showed me the handsomest 

 onion-plants I believe I ever saw. They were 

 about the size of a slate-pencil, and had little 

 bulbs about as large as beans. In fact, they 

 were ahead of any thing I had raised with 

 much labor and pains from seed sown in the 

 greenhouse in January. There is this about it, 

 however — he did not have plants ready to set 

 out as early in the season as I did. The winter- 

 ing seems to give the onion a pretty severe set- 

 back, and it is only until quite late in the 

 spring that it recovers sufficiently so as to have 

 vigor and vitality enough to stand transplant- 

 ing. As this season, however, has been a 

 remarkably late one, very likely tie would 

 'usually have to transplant along in April and 

 May instead of May and June, as they have 

 been this year. The winter onions are all right 

 before the American Pearl comes on the mar- 

 ket; after the latter, however, are to be had, 

 no one would take the Egyptian or winter onion 

 hardly as a gift. These latter get to l:e tough 

 and woody after they have sent up seed-stalks. 

 We have just tried some of the American Pearl 

 for cooking, and they make a very savory dish 

 for one who likes cooked onions, even if the 

 greater part of the stalk be used also. Of 

 course, none of them have yet made a ripened 

 bulb, although we have some onions as large as 

 the top of a coffee-cup: and, by the way, this 

 thick fleshy stalk is getting to be a serious 

 trouble with onions in general, especially with 

 the Prizetaker. With the great demand there 

 is for the seed, I fear nobody lias the courage to 

 pick out only onions for seed having a very 

 small top. or no top at all, when thoy are cured. 

 There is an onion farm near us where ti^ey raise 

 100.000 busliels of onions a year. Their foreman 

 told ine that a prominent seedsman had been 



there trying to buy some seed. Their seed was 

 all grown for their own use. from choice select- 

 ed onions, out of their thousands of bushels. 

 When he found he could not buy any seed of 

 them at all. he told them that such seed as 

 they had grown for their own use was worth 

 $5.00 a pound to anybody who grows onions. 

 Well, some of us have been paying $5.00 a 

 pound for the seed, and have not got seed worth 

 it even then. A year ago I selected from the 

 Cleveland market some of the finest specimens 

 of Spanish onions that could be had, without 

 regard to price. They weighed one or two 

 pounds, and they had nothing but a little dried- 

 up stalk, scarcely visible. I succeeded in rais- 

 ing only about a quarter of a pound of seed 

 from these great bulbs. We have now several 

 thousand plants, but, like the onion-farm folks, 

 they are not for sale. In fact, I am not sure 

 yet that they are worth more than the onion- 

 plants that we do sell; but I tell you, I am 

 watching them with a great deal of anxiety. If 

 they produce large onions (without being double, 

 and without sending up seed stalks), just like 

 the big ones the seed came from, they would be 

 worth to me S^IO.OO a pound, and may be S25.00. 

 I wonder whether the experiment stations have 

 done any thing in the way of raising Pedigree 

 onion-seed — the model of what we want to 

 grow is in our market at almost eveiy season of 

 the year. Where are they grown, and how do 

 they do it? Will somebody tell us? They are 

 good keepers, because we have had them for 

 months during almost all kinds of weather. By 

 the way. our American Pearls annoy us by 

 sending up seed-stalks. Gregory and some 

 other writers tell us that, if we break off the 

 seed-stalks, they will make just as good onions. 

 It is not true. If we break off' the seed -stalk 

 they will send up another, and they will get 

 strong and tough. They are as contrary about 

 it as a hen that wants to sit. Another trouble 

 with many of our onions from choice seed, is, 

 that they have become tinctured somewhat 

 with the ynuUipUcr onions. If you v/on't let 

 them send up seed-stalks they will go to dou- 

 bling up, and pretty soon you will have two 

 onions instead of one — sometimes three or four. 

 The best seed that is offered for sale does this 

 more or less. If my choice seed proves to be 

 free from all these freaks and vagaries, won't 

 it be an acquisition? It will, however, cost 

 something to go on the market and buy onions 

 that weigh a pound or more, pay two or three 

 dollars a bushel, and then succeed in getting 

 only one or two heads of seed from each great 

 big onion. By the way. some good friend said 

 in one of the agricultural papers, that he wish- 

 ed A. I. Root would give the world a strain of 

 onions that would not make it necessary to go 

 off in the woods to work all the rest of the 

 afternoon after one has had them for dinner. 

 Thank you for your confidence, good friend; 

 but I believe I would work harder for a ?itrain 

 that would not «end up seed-stalks, or com- 

 mence doubling up when you simply wanted 

 one nice smooth round bulb. 



STRAW BERRIES. 



We are getting nice large berries again from 

 Marietta. O.. 110 miles further south than where 

 we live. But almost as soon as these berries 

 came, our one row of Michell's Early began 

 giving us nice fruit, well colored, good shape, 

 and of excellent flavor. We have had Michell's 

 Early on probation three years, and this is the 

 first time it has not been injured more or less by 

 frost. This year it blossomed fairly, and not a 

 bit of frost has troubled us. Just as soon as we 

 made our first picking I went at it and planted 

 a row 40 rods long. Its yield of fruit is not to be 

 compared with the Haverlands, of course; but 



