182 



QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 



Breathing 

 Pores. 



Mangel 

 Wurzel. 



Club 

 Koot. 



Sugar 

 Corn. 



Rotation. 



garden vegetables to reach edible condition are about as follows : peas, 

 forty to fifty days ; beans, forty to fifty days ; corn, seventy to seventy-five 

 days ; cucumber, seventy to eighty days ; radish, eighteen to twenty-five 

 days ; spinach, forty to fifty days ; tomato, one hundred to one hundred 

 and twenty days. For Autumn cropping add ten to fifteen days to each 

 period. 



1002. Q. How many breathing pores are there to the inch on the leaves 

 of most garden vegetables? 



A. The pores are called stomata, and give passage to air, serving the 

 purpose of expiration and inspiration. On most plants there are one 

 hundred to five hundred thousand to the square incli. 



1003. Q. In what way do Mangel Wurzel differ from Swede turnips ? 

 A. Mangels, which are large growing beets, have to be sown a month 



earlier than Swedes, which are of the turnip family, the Mangels requir- 

 ing a longer period to develop. The Mangel roots deeply, and is not so 

 dependent upon frequent rains, as it has powers of accommodation to fluc- 

 tuating circumstances greater than the turnip. It is more leafy, and is a 

 plant requiring a higher temperature than the turnip. It is a gross 

 feeder, requiring a heavy dressing of manure, and is particularly devel- 

 oped in growth by nitrogenous food. 



1004. Q. Part of my truck patch was last year affected by club root, 

 and as I am limited in capital I cannot afford to rent new land, now what 

 can I do to remedy the evil ? 



A. In the Winter broadcast seventy-five bushels of air-slacked lime to 

 the acre, also one thousand pounds of kainit, and before seeding in the 

 Spring, apply to the acre four thousand gallons of water having in solu- 

 tion forty pounds of corrosive sublimate. 



1005. Q. When was Sweet or sugar corn introduced ? 



A. The Eight Rowed sugar corn was the first introduced, and while it 

 appeared generally in seed catalogues about 1840, and was in 1830 offered 

 for sale by one or two leading seedsmen, it was not till about 1850 that it 

 became generally appreciated as superior to the field corns used generally 

 for "roasting," as corn was cooked in those days, the varieties used 

 for table purposes being then the Early Canada, Horse Tooth and Tusca- 

 rora. But sweet corn was known many years before, as there are records 

 of its existence among the Indians on the Susquehanna river as early as 

 1779. Pure sweet corns are nearly all very oily, very little starch being 

 visible, the oily condition being expressed by the word corneous or 

 horny, and just as soon as this condition begins to breed out, such types 

 cease to be true sugar corn. 



1006. Q. What is the benefit of rotation of crops? 



A. A change every year of crops on a field, especially so that the crops of 

 same nature do not go back for five or six years, is higlily advantageous, as 

 the alternating plants if properly selected do not require the same quanti- 

 ties or conditions of plant food, and even if the artificial additions of man- 

 ure are only moderate in quantity, there may be through the processes of 



