138 GARDENING WITH BRAINS * 



tropical luxuriance, and the elongated and beau- 

 tiful potatoes attain a large size, but they do 

 not quite ripen before frost. After several trials 

 I wrote to Mr. Burbank about an earlier variety 

 with his trade-mark, telling him also I hadn't 

 been very successful with his Iceland cucum- 

 bers. He replied: "Cucumbers and melons 

 like a great amount of water and a great amount 

 of ammoniacal manure. Then they will do 

 simply wonders. There is no Early Burbank 

 potato. The Early Rose is about the sweetest 

 and most satisfactory early potato, but it is not 

 a very heavy yielder." 



The Early Rose was the ancestor of the Bur- 

 bank, which, while evidently not the best for 

 a mountainous region, is the potato for the 

 Pacific coast (see an interesting list of favorites 

 of various states in Samuel Eraser's book on the 

 potato). Salzer's Six Weeks does not ripen in 

 half the usual time, but it is surprisingly early 

 and of the finest quality. It pays to buy pedi- 

 greed seed. 



Inasmuch as the growing time of the potato 

 in the garden can also be reduced by a fortnight 

 or more by starting the tubers in the house, a 

 Six Weeks variety ought to be reducible to the 

 radish standard by three weeks from planting 

 to the table; so, after all, my dream about the 

 three-week melons may have had prophetic 

 significance! 



Corn, too, can be accelerated by starting it in 



