226 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 



There is lots to be discovered yet about "the spuds." 

 Sawdust is reported an excellent mulch for them, as for 

 small fruits. When you store any seeds to plant, put car- 

 bolic moth balls with them : it checks insects and mice 

 and helps to protect the planted seeds from birds. 



In a general way, with potatoes and with other things 

 that you want good and plenty, get specific directions and 

 follow them. Most people won't read directions; more 

 can't follow them. Those people have their knives out for 

 "book farmers and professors," but you can't improve on 

 experience and experiment by the light of laziness or of 

 nature. 



A delicate jelly is made out of the red outer pulp 

 of rose berries. It would be romantic to develop a Rose 

 fruit from those seed pods, as the peach was developed from 

 the almond. We have invented stranger fruits than that, 

 such as the logan-berry and the pomato. 



But there is better chance for profit in doing the old things 

 better, especially when the experiment costs little or nothing. 



You t can have a strawberry garden on your roof or even 

 on a balcony. This need not be costly. Clinch all the nails 

 on the inside of a stout barrel. Bore half a dozen two-inch 

 holes in the bottom, or put in a layer of stones, for drainage. 

 Bore a row of eight holes about eight inches from the bottom 

 of the barrel and about eight inches apart. Eight inches 

 above this bore a second row of holes "staggered," and a 

 third eight inches above those. Pile several old tomato 

 cans with perforated bottoms one on the other in the center 

 of the barrel : these should be the height of the barrel and 

 placed upright in its middle. This is the conductor down 

 which water should be poured at intervals before the soil 

 gets quite dry. Fill the barrel with soil made of one half 



