1887 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



5BI 



part of the tubes were stopped up with 

 wooden blocks, so that we could sow peas 

 in a double row, then a space three feet, and 

 then another double row, letting tiie phos- 

 phate attaclinient sow phosphate all ovei- 

 tlie ground. It took perhaps lifteen min- 

 utes to sow tiie peas, as above. Had we 

 done it the old way by hand, the ground 

 would need marking out with some sort of 

 furrower; tin-u we shoiiUl liave to sow our 

 phosphate in tiie furrow, and sprinkle in 

 the peas, eitiu-r by hand or by some sort of 

 hand-drill ; tlieii tiiey must be covered over 

 with a Iiorse or liy hand. The grain-drill 

 did it all in Uiese Ii'W miimtes, and covered 

 the seed perfectly, liefore tlie drill was put 

 away in the li»ol-sned, however, I sowed two 

 double rows of spinach the same way we 

 sowed our peas; thou a couple of ro.vs of 

 Eclipse beets, aiul the machine was ready 

 to go in under cover before the storm came. 

 It iveem.s lo me I never had any piece of 

 work so satisfactorily and quickly done as it 

 sowed the beets and spinach. All the time 

 occupied was in letting the team walk from 

 one end of the field to the other. I left 

 spaces between the beets, for early cabbage. 

 These we managed to get in, the same day. 

 They were our best plants, from the cold 

 frames, and wintered outdoors, so of course 

 they could stand a freeze. The freeze came, 

 and tlie cabbages looked for a good while as 

 though they would never do any thing. 

 They stood there ; they did not die, it is 

 true, but they did not seem to grow a bit. 

 The weather was so cold that the beets and 

 peas were so slow in starting that I began 

 to be afraid that they were not going to 

 start, but they did. The spinach, howe. er. 

 came up the first of any thing. It was loo 

 cold for any kind of weeds, so the hardy 

 spinach had the full use of the grouml. liy 

 and by the cabbages got started ; and after a 

 while the beets began to come up quite 

 thickly. The spinach never received any 

 hoeing or weeding whatever. Before weeds 

 liad a chance to make their appearance, the 

 leaves covered the ground ; and when the 

 vegetable was worth $2.00 a barrel at whole- 

 sale, we could easily get a barrel of extra 

 nice from a rod of row. 



Now, very likely many of you know noth- 

 ing about spinach. When we first put it on 

 our lunch-room table a great many would 

 not take it at all— said they didn't like 

 " greens.'' I explained to them that spin- 

 ach was not greens at all — that it is a deli- 

 cious vegetable more like asparagus. Final- 

 ly they got to tasting it. and pretty soon 



spinach was in big demand. Let me re- 

 mind the housewives not to cook it as 

 greens. Cook it :;s you do asparagus, and 

 it will pretty soon go otT fast enougli. It 

 seemed for a time :;s if our town could not 

 get euou<.'h of it ; and after the plant began 

 to send up seed-stalks a yard high, we sold it 

 for greens even then. These two rows, 

 however, were too much for our Mediiui 

 market. It could not be all disposed of be- 

 foie it would probably get too old and hai'd 

 for !.se. As it was a. new vegetable to us, 

 however, we did not know just when it 

 would cease to b^ edible; l)ut as there was 

 more than our town could consume, it began 

 to be a (piestion wluit we should do with it. 

 I remembered hearing about a kind of cab- 

 bage that grew so fast that cue head would 

 support a cow— that is, as many leaves 

 would grow over night as she could eat dur- 

 ing the day ; ;iud when I saw our Jersey cow 

 looking wis!ifidly at the beautiful daik- 

 green rows of spinach, I pulled her an arm- 

 ful to let her taste them ; and from that daj 

 forward she had spinach to her heart's con • 

 tent. Ill fact, she prefened spinach to any 

 thing else that could be olTered her, and it 

 seemed almost impossible to give her more 

 than she could disp;^se of. Did it affect the 

 milk ? Not at all, luitil the plant s had gone so 

 far in perfecting si ed-stalUs tii;;t they were 

 slightly bittei-. then the milk began to taste 

 of it. Now, this plant m;ide this luxuriant 

 growth almost before any thing else began 

 to look green ; and I liereby give notice to 

 the agricultural papers, and to farmers in 

 general, that spinach may be raised for 

 cows befoie you can raise any thing else I 

 know of, unless, indeed, it is rye, and I am 

 sure that spinach will go away ahead of rye 

 in the amount cf foliage it produces. If it 

 happens to be worth two or three dollars a 

 barrel in the market, why, of course you 

 woidd not think of giving it to your cows. 

 The books tell us it can be wintered over 

 just as well as wheat or rye. I have never 

 succeeded in doing it. however; but I am 

 going to try harder again this fall and win- 

 ter, and I think I shall succeed. After we 

 had used and sold all we could of those two 

 rows, I kept the cow on ir, for quite a long 

 time, and then there was considerable still 

 left to go to seed. When the seed got 

 brown we cut it with a cradle, and it is now 

 stored away on the barn floor, dry enough to 

 thrash, and fan out with a fanning-mill, so I 

 have my own seed for next year. There is 

 just one thing about this great crop of spin- 

 ach that I think it may perhaps be well to 



