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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 15. 



WHAT CAN WE PROFITABLY PUT ON OUR 

 GROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST? 



Dear friends, there are lots of things we can 

 plant, with a good prospect of getting a crop; 

 but, oh dear me! that word "profitably" 

 troubles me just now. If you have some good 

 rich land, and have a horse or horses, and 

 nothing particular to do, you are all right. If. 

 however, you have got to hire a horse, and pay 

 rent for the use of the land, and hire a man to 

 do the work, I actually do not know of any 

 thing which we can plant during the month of 

 August; and with the present prices that are 

 offered for stuff, 1 am afraid I do not know 

 what you can plant during a7iy month so as to 

 be pretty sure of a profit. May be you think 

 that your old friend is getting the blues; but I 

 am not, after all. If 1 had the land, and was 

 out of work, I would most assuredly keep busy 

 on that laud, even if it were not more than a 

 quarter of an acre, and I would make some sort 

 of wages. Of course, the wages might be very 

 low; but low wages are better than none at 

 all. If you have children, then you can keep 

 them busy, and make them earn something. 

 Perhaps you will have to give them to under- 

 stand, however, that their pay will have to de- 

 pend upon the outcome of the work. If you 

 get good prices you can pay them good prices, 

 and vice versa. 



lam studying just now what I shall put on 

 my ground. I am afraid the crop I raise may 

 not seW, but I can do this, certainly: I can raise 

 enough for home consumption, and I can raise 

 feed for my big team, so as to save the money 

 it will take to buy it; but with oats and corn at 

 present prices I am afraid I shall not get very 

 big pay. It does us good, oftentimes, to work 

 for small wages; and I am not sure but it does 

 us good a great many times to be out of work. 

 The only way to teach us to value our blessings 

 is to cut them off for a little while. When a 

 severe drouth cuts off the water-supply that 

 has always been as free as the air we breathe, 

 then and then only do we begin to realize what 

 a blessing good water in plenty is. 



Well, let us go back to the matter of garden- 

 lugin August. Wax beans may still be plant- 

 ed, but you will probably get snap beans for 

 table use only, and not dry beans; and may be 

 nobody will want to buy them after you 

 get them raised. Sometimes, however, they 

 bring very good prices just before they are all 

 spoiled by the frost; and I have known it to 

 pay quite well to protect some of them with 

 cotton sheeting, grass, or weeds, so that you 

 have a supply when everybody else has none. 

 There is almost always quite a call for things 

 after the first frost has cut them off; but with 

 the warm growing weather we have been hav- 

 ing, navy beans would be likely to. mature 

 their seed if planted at once. Eclipse beets 

 will do nicely if sown now. If you can not sell 

 them for table use you can store them in the 

 cellar in sand or sawdust, or even light mellow 

 soil. Peat from the swamps does splendidly; 

 and they will be nice for table use all winter 

 long. All that is necessary is something to 

 keep them from wilting. If they will not sell, 

 you can feed them to stock usually. 



We have been putting out cabbage-plants for 

 the past two or three days, and I expect them 

 to make good heads before frost. We shall put 

 out cauliflower for a week or ten days. I enjoy 

 seeing these hardy vegetables grow when the 

 severe weather has banished their insect foes, 

 and when there is no longer danger of the heat. 



If you have large strong celery-plants and 

 rich ground you can get nice celery if set out 

 during the month of August. You can sow 

 sweet corn, and, in fact, almost any corn, and 



get a good yield of fodder, more or less depend- 

 ing on when the frost comes. And now is just 

 the time to sow the seed of Grand Rapids let- 

 tuce to get it ripe for Thanksgiving. As a rule 

 it needs 90 days to get nice lettuce from the 

 seed. 



With favorable weather and plenty of rain, 

 American pearl onion seeds may be sown now, 

 and the onions will get largH enough, .md have 

 sufficient root to stand overwinter. I believe, 

 however, the matured sets put in the last of 

 this month, or any time during September, 

 make a little surer thing of it. American pearl 

 onions always sell. Get them into the city 

 markets just about the last of strawberry- 

 picking — pearly white onions, nicely matured — 

 and people will want them. Winter or Egyp- 

 tian onion-sets may be put in now, and they 

 are sure in any climate or under any circum- 

 stances; and people will always buy them un- 

 til they can get the American pearl or some- 

 thing better — that is, for bunch onions. 



All kinds of peas may be put in now. In fact, 

 we sowed a peck of Stratagems yesterday, and 

 we are going to put in Premium Gem and 

 American Wonder for two or three weeks yet. 



Radishes are just right to be planted now, 

 providing people will buy them when there is 

 so much other stuff on the market. Spinach 

 may be put in now, but it is a little early. 

 Should the weather be very favorable, it may 

 run up to seed. It is a pretty good plan, how- 

 ever, to make a planting every few days for 

 the next two or three weeks; then you will be 

 sure to hit it. Real nice spinach, grown on ex- 

 ceedingly rich ground, always sells — at least, 

 that has been my experience. 



Purple-top White Globe turnips will be just 

 right for table use if put in now. If you can 

 get even 20 cts. a bushel for all you can raise, 

 you can make a good thing of it on any decent 

 land. 



Last, but not least, I think the middle of 

 August is just the nicest time in the world to 

 set out strawberries. I would not advise any 

 one, however, to send off very much of a dis- 

 tance for the plants. If you can grow them on 

 your own ground, or get them of a neighbor so 

 they will be out of the ground only a few hours, 

 you can make every plant live unless some- 

 thing happens. Our way is to take each plant 

 up. with a lump of dirt adhering. We do this 

 rapidly with some of the transplanters now in 

 common use, and failure is almost an unknown 

 thing. L^t me tell you how we manage. In 

 the spring we had half a dozen plants each of 

 Wm. Belt and Brandy wine, of Matthew Craw- 

 ford. These are valuable and high-priced 

 plants. We gave them a good deal of room 

 and extra nice ground, and yesterday, Aug. 12. 

 each plant had got such a family of young 

 plants about it that it was necessary for them 

 to have more room. We fixed some ground 

 nicely, stretched a string, and, with the aid of 

 a new transplanter, we took out every plant 

 that was crowding its neighbor, gave it plenty 

 of room to go to work and start a family of its 

 own. Then the holes left by the removal of 

 the plants were filled with old well-rotted 

 stable manure; and before frost comes we are 

 going to get another lot of fine plants. By the 

 way, I never saw a single strawberry-plant 

 make such a broad dense matted row between 

 the months of April and August as they have 

 this season. Our wet July is what did it. 



Now, do not go too heavily into any of these 

 things, and then neglect the work, or trust it to 

 hired help, and have failures. Practice on 

 moving strawberry-plants on a small scale, and 

 do it all summer long. When you become so 

 proficient that every plant you put out goes 



