NOVEMBER 1, 1912 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jhfigh-pressure Gardeiiing 



"the ELLIS POTATO SYSTEM;" SEE SPECIAL 

 NOTICES; OCT. 1. 



For the $3.00 I sent, I received some in- 

 structions about growing potatoes. The 

 instructions, however, although they cost 

 more than tlie $2.00 potato-book and our 

 own combined, 1 do not think can be worth 

 any thing near what those two up-to-date 

 books ought to be worth to any potato- 

 grower. As it is getting to be quite the 

 fashion to have some "system" for sale, I 

 want to go into this a little more minutely. 



You will notice that this system promises 

 to tell you how to grow big crops of po- 

 tatoes — 600 bushels per acre, for instance. 

 Well, I will tell you what I got by way 

 of instruction for raising this big crop. 

 First, it is copied from the book "Garden 

 Yard," by Bolton Hall. In fact, Ellis ac- 

 knowledges that he copied it. It was 

 poorly copied with a mimeograph, or some 

 machine for taking many copies from a 

 sheet written on a typewriter. A part of 

 it was so badly copied that it was almost 

 illegible. As I have the original book 

 in question I read Ellis' instructions from 

 that instead of his copy of it. Now, Bol- 

 ton Hall copies his instructions from a lit- 

 tle book sent out in 1905 by Finney 

 Spragiie, of Chicago. It was Mr. C. E. 

 Ford who raised the great crop of pota- 

 toes, and after spending considerable time 

 in trying to understand hotv he did it, 1 

 am satisfied that Bolton Hall has made of 

 this thing a blunder. Ellis copies this 

 blunder, and it looks to me as if he did not 

 know enough about growing potatoes him- 

 self to recognize his blunder. He sent me 

 over a hundred questions to answer. Then 

 he sent me his rejilies to the answers I 

 gave. The supposition or claim is that he 

 answers each customer according to his 

 special needs. It does not seem to me 

 that this is true, however, for many of 

 the answers, or nearly all of them, are 

 copied from something written on the type- 

 writer. Like the patent-medicine quacks, 

 instead of answering each applicant's ques- 

 tions individually he has a lot of printed 

 sheets sent out, printed on some copying 

 machine. 



I am sorry to find so much fault, for 

 friend Ellis' instructions are mostly good 

 and valuable. But every thing he men- 

 tions is already found in the nicely printed 

 books on potato culture which 1 have al- 

 ready mentioned. 1 ex]dained to him tliat 

 I spend my winters in Florida, and he tried 

 to gi\e me irstructions that are applicable 

 to my Florida home; but you can imagine 

 about what instructions one would give 



who had never been in Florida, or at least 

 who had never grown potatoes there. As 

 an illustration : He gives instructions how 

 to handle bugs in Florida, when neither 

 a Colorado bug nor a flea-beetle (those two 

 great pests here in the North) has ever 

 been seen in Florida — at least in Southern 

 Florida, where I am located. 



Once more, let me say in closing, look 

 out for the man who has a system or 

 secret in regard to agriculture, to be sent 

 for a certain sum of money. If he has a 

 good xip-to-date book to sell at a reason- 

 able price, by all means give him encour- 

 agement, and increase your knowledge and 

 information at the same time. 



BLEACHING CELERY BY MEANS OF STIFF PAPER 



INSTEAD OP EARTH ; RAISING POTATOES 



FROM PEELINGS. 



I am quite sure that your readers of the North 

 would be benefited by a detailed article regarding 

 the use of paper for bleaching celery — the kind and 

 quality of the paper ; proper time to put it on, if 

 it could be described; how it is wrapped and tied; 

 whether it is expensive ; whether it can be used to 

 advantage in the North, etc. 



Throughout the North, hilling is resorted to in 

 order to bleach celery. This is quite laborious, both 

 to pile the hill and then to level it. In my section 

 we plant the young plants 6 inches apart in the 

 rows, ten in a row, with rows about 8 inches apart. 

 This will cover a space from the first plant in the 

 row to the tenth one of nearly 5 feet; and 1000 

 plant-hills will make 100 rows 66 feet. It must all 

 be hilled by hand — quite a bit of work when very 

 little results. 



When it is considered that the pile of dirt is 

 little or no protection from freezing, and that we 

 must also use a litter covering, I believe that paper 

 might be profitably used, and with the litter would 

 be a better protection than dirt. 



Regarding your statement that whole large pota- 

 toes are the best seed I quite agree ; but when seed 

 is selling in excess of two dollars a bushel the 

 poor man must resort to subterfuge. During the 

 past winter and spring I had the good wife save 

 the peels of those she cooked, cutting a little deeper 

 at the eye. During January and February these 

 peels were planted in the hot frames, and after 

 March in the open ground ; and while we may have 

 secured a larger yield had we used large whole 

 potatoes, yet the experiment was quite successful. 



Lake Roland, Md., Sept. 29. Benj. B. Jones. 



Friend J., if I am correct, pretty much 

 all the celery j^roduced in Florida is now 

 bleached with a heavy kind of paper that 

 comes in rolls made expressly for tliat busi- 

 ness. I do not know how far it has been 

 used here in the North; but in the South 

 it seems to have taken the place of earth- 

 ing up entirely. The paper is held in 

 place by means of laths or similar stakes. 

 They are pushed into the ground and held 

 together at the top by means of wire 

 loojied around a stake on one side to the 

 stake on the opposite or other side of the 

 row. If it is carefully handled, it may be 

 taken off and laid away and used season 

 after season. 



In regard to growing potatoes from 



