684 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUBE. 



Aug. 



ed. As an illustration of how wonderfully 

 prolific they promise to be, I will mention 

 that I counted 100 pods on a single stalk. 

 But very likely, these will not all mature. 



This year again emphasizes the value of 

 the Jersey Wakefield cabbage, H. A. 

 March's strain, above any thing offered in 

 the catalogues. The heads are so hard and 

 solid that, if you undertake to handle a bar- 

 rel of them, you begin to think it must be 

 rilled with cast iron ; while if you purchase 

 a barrel of cabbages from the city markets, 

 you can toss the barrel into a wagon, with- 

 out any trouble whatever. We have been 

 planting the Jersey Wakefield pretty much 

 altogether for cabbages during the whole 

 summer. The only trouble is, they burst 

 unless they are gathered promptly ; but they 

 are so much harder aud so much crisper 

 than any other, our customers willingly pay 

 more for them. 



Our celery has given us a great deal of 

 trouble this season, because it runs up to 

 seed, especially during hot weather. If 

 anybody has a strain of celery that will give 

 us early stalks, say in June, and not run up 

 to seed, we should like to get hold of it. 

 The Golden Self -blanching comes the near- 

 est to lilling the bill. 



The Corey extra-early sweet corn has this 

 season done wonders. We have had roast- 

 ing-ears on the market for over four weeks 

 before anybody else had any at all ; and for 

 all of two weeks we got 2 cts. an ear. We 

 have managed this year so as to have one 

 crop follow another just exactly as we want- 

 ed it. There has been no glut in the mar- 

 ket, and we have had enough to supply all 

 the demand at fair prices. 



We are overloaded with cucumbers, how- 

 ever. We sold them for a good while at 10 

 cts. a pound, and then at 5 cts.; and now we 

 offer them at a penny apiece, or 60 cts. per 

 100; and customers can have them just as 

 big or just as little as they choose. The ob- 

 jection to selling cucumbers by the pound 

 when they get to be very plentiful, is, that 

 people begin to call for small ones ; and of 

 course we can not sell pickles by the pound 

 at the same price that we do great big cu- 

 cumbers ; therefore they had better be sold 

 by the hundred. 



Grand Rapids lettuce and Henderson's 

 New York are the standard kinds of lettuce 

 for hot weather. 



The Silver-King onion is the one for the 

 market-gardener, providing he does not have 

 too many at one time. They need to be 

 sold about as fast as harvested, or they will 

 rot. 



The Stratagem pea is the standard for us, 

 after we get through with the Alaska and 

 American Wonder. It is not much trouble 

 to sow them or drill them in, every ten days 

 or two weeks. 



I am very much pleased to be able to re- 

 port Henderson's Puritan potato as stand- 

 ing with us at the head of the list. We 

 have never, had a nicer potato for cooking, 

 especially for baking, in our household. 

 Well-ripened potatoes, nicely baked, can be 

 shaken out of the peeling by rapping on 

 it with a knife, and the quality is equal to 

 any. The shape is also equal to if not bet- 



ter than any other potato we have ever got 

 hold of. They come out of the ground so 

 clean and white that one almost imagines 

 they are Brahma hens' eggs. They are not 

 quite as early as the Early Ohio ; ?o the lat- 

 ter will still be retained as a first early pota- 

 to. Last, but not least, they are wonder- 

 fully productive. To get our Early Ohios 

 extra early, we planted large-sized whole 

 potatoes ; and, by the way, whenever you 

 want potatoes before anybody else, plant 

 whole ones, or, better still, sprout them in 

 the greenhouse, and pick out the largest po- 

 tatoes you have. Now, the Puritans were 

 cut, most of the pieces, very small, in order- 

 to get the most possible from a limited 

 quantity of seed ; but the yield per row was 

 fully equal to the Early Ohio. If it does 

 everywhere as it does with us, it is going to 

 be one of the staple potatoes. 



Out of our IS early pumpkins sent us by 

 kind friends, just one has a ripe pumpkin 

 on the vines at this date. It is not a yellow 

 pumpkin, however, but it is of a light 

 cream color. We are indebted for it to the 

 writer of the following, which came to us on 

 a postal card last winter : 



Mr. Riiot:—! send you to-day a packet of pumpkin 

 seed. It is light yellow in color, a new kind with us. 

 It is excellent for pies. J. T. Van Petten. 



Linn, Kan., Feb. 25, 1889. 



Burpee has certainly given us an improve- 

 ment in crook-neck summer squashes. His 

 Mammoth Summer crook-neck is a sight to 

 behold, on account of its immense size, and 

 at the same time the quality is fully equal 

 to the old kind. 



The Ignotum and Dwarf Champion to- 

 matoes fully sustain their reputation ; but 

 somebody, 1 can not now remember who, 

 has given us a new tomato that threatens to 

 overturn every thing else. It is the "•Peach" 

 tomato. They are wonderfully like peaches, 

 and just as early as any thing we have. 

 They are not very large, however ; and the 

 vital point is, can Livingston or somebody 

 else make them larger? Now, it seems to 

 me that friend Livingston and the catalogue 

 makers were all of them singularly dull 

 when they forgot or omitted to tell us that 

 the Peach tomato is in one respect ahead of 

 and above and beyond any other good-sized 

 tomato. It never rots. How do I know? 

 Why, because I recognized it as belonging 

 to the Plum and Pear tomato family just as 

 soon as I saw it, and these have never been 

 known to rot. You may remember that we 

 have discussed this matter before. We had 

 seriously thought of holding on to the King 

 Humbert ; but it was shaped so much like a 

 flat-iron instead of egg-shape, as the cata- 

 logues gave it, that nobody would have it. 

 Now, the peach tomato has just as pretty a 

 shape as any tomato ever brought out. Some 

 of the specimens are as large as fair-sized 

 peaches, but there are a great many rather 

 small ones. Can it be made larger, and how 

 soon can we have it? I should not omit to 

 mention the fuzz, or bloom. It seems really 

 comical to think that Nature, in her sport- 

 ing, has copied the fuzz on the peach. But 

 it is so. If you arrange them in a basket so 

 that only the blossom end is visible, you 



