596 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



JULY 



SPECIAL DEPARTMENT FOR A. I. ROOT, AND HIS 

 FRIENDS WHO LOVE TO RAISE CROPS. 



JIAltKE'l -GARDENING IN JULY. 



0NE of the venders of a recipe for mak- 

 ing artificial honey once said, as a 

 reason why people had better manu- 

 facture honey instead of having the 

 bees gather it, that it required brains 

 enough to run a cotton-factory, to produce 

 honey successfully with an apiary of bee- 

 h'n; s. Well, may be he was not so far from 

 light, so far as brains are concerned ; al- 

 though 1 believe it would take still more 

 brains to humbug and defraud the public, 

 and at the snme time build up a profit- 

 able business. Well, I have been thinking, 

 during this July, that it takes as much 

 brains to run a market-garden successfully 

 as to run an apiary ; and it is right in the 

 line of this matter of demand and supply 

 that I spoke about last month. As an illus- 

 tration : Last year we raised so many peas, 

 and managed so awkwardly, that they ri- 

 pened all at once, as it were, until nobody 

 wanted to see another pea. Prices went 

 away down, and beautiful stratagems would 

 hardly bring enough to pay for picking and 

 carrying around town. This year I thought 

 I would profit by experience, and I did. 

 Just as soon as one lot of peas was up, an- 

 other lot was planted, or drilled in, rather, 

 with a grain-drill. It is a great deal more 

 trouble to get the drill out so many times, 

 and drill only two rows or three, the length 

 of the lot ; but it does the business. This 

 year we have not had a pea on the wagon 

 that was old and hard. The reason is, that 

 customers have been for six weeks calling 

 for the peas a little faster than they ripened; 

 and we have had $2.00 a bushel for every 

 peck we have sold, with the exception of a 

 small portion of the first Alaskas. Now, 

 my mistake was in not planting one row 

 more when I did plant, so as to give our 

 Medina people just enough. We could then 

 have had good prices, and supplied all de- 

 mand. It has been the same way with lettuce. 

 During the last of June, we had great beau- 

 tiful heads of Henderson's New York let- 

 tuce, about as solid and almost as large as 

 cabbages. At 5 cents a pound it was very 

 good business indeed. But we had too 

 many of them at once. It did not run up to 

 seed ; but as we had so much wet w r eather 

 the heads rotted at the center. When these 

 great crisp heads of lettuce were just right, 

 nobody would look at any other— not even 

 the Grand Rapids. Several patches of let- 

 tuce that were grown with much care and 

 pains, were never made any use of what- 

 ever. When the big-head lettuce, however, 

 began rotting at the center, all other kinds 

 began to shoot up seed ; and in one week 

 after having the market overstocked, we 

 had no nice lettuce at all, and the price has 

 gone up from 5 cents to 10 cents per pound. 

 Now, to manage so as to have just enough 

 of each and every product in the market- 

 garden to supply the demand clear through 

 the season the year round, is certainly a 

 matter requiring much calculation and fore- 

 thought. In fact, I should like to see the 



man who could do it, even for a town of 

 2000 inhabitants, and make no mistake. It 

 is just so with the plant-trade. This year 

 we had a great quantity of tomatoes, and 

 thousands are yet in the seed-bed, or, rath- 

 er, where they were transplanted ; but the 

 late cabbages we did not get enough of, and 

 lost quite a good many orders. The Jersey 

 Wakefield was a little overdone. By the 

 way, the finest and hardest heads of cab- 

 bage we had last year to winter over were 

 the Jersey Wakefield and Winningstadt. 

 They kept over winter, in fact, a great deal 

 better than Flat Dutch, and cabbages of 

 that sort. Last year we managed cabbages 

 so as to have not only enough, but too many, 

 and many of them burst and went to 

 w r aste. We made sour-kraut of them, but 

 the sour-kraut did not all sell. This season, 

 as with the peas, we went to the other ex- 

 treme. We have not had enough cabbages 

 for the demand so far. The consequence is, 

 we are still getting 5 cents a pound for 

 choice hard heads of Jersey Wakefield, even 

 now during the middle of July. We are so 

 well pleased with friend March's strain of 

 Jersey Wakefield that we planted some 

 seeds the first of July. The plants are up 

 nicely, and will be put in the field during 

 the last of July. We expect these will make 

 nice heads to winter over ; and if the price 

 in the spring is not well up, we shall try 

 planting some of our own so as to raise our 

 own seed. 



We have had more trouble this summer 

 than ever before, with early celery running 

 up to seed. We thought at first the fault 

 was in the seed, and were going to com- 

 plain to Peter Henderson because his White 

 Plume ran to seed more than it ever did be- 

 fore. But' when the Boston Market, Self 

 Blanching, Golden Dwarf, and, in fact, the 

 whole of them, ran up to seed, instead of 

 making celery, as they have former seasons, 

 we decided that it was the fault of the sea- 

 son. If any reader of Gleanings has a 

 strain of celery (it ought to be White Plume 

 or Self Blanching) that is especially adapt- 

 ed for getting early celery so as to put it on 

 the market in June, he would confer a favor 

 on us by sending us samples. We usually 

 have celery on the market during the last of 

 June; but our customers have not had a 

 bit so far at this date, July 9. 



THE BEST EARLY STRAWBERRY. 



I told you a month ago, that the one fact 

 that the Jessie furnishes strawberries in 

 every respect equal to the Sharpless, but a 

 weak or ten days earlier, was of itself a 

 sufficient reason for giving that variety 

 prominence. Well, after our strawberries 

 were all picked I happened to go out to that 

 nice patch of Jessies that I told you about ; 

 and what do you think? Why, it was pret- 

 ty well covered with berries, when there 

 was not any other strawberry on the place, 

 with one exception. These later Jessies are 

 not so awkward in shape as those first ripen- 

 ing were. They are nice and round, red all 

 over— excellent in flavor, and sold readily 

 for two cents a quart more than the black 

 raspberries. Now, this maybe caused part- 

 ly by the way in which this bed has been 

 cared for. The runners were kept off, and 



