*«? WHAT VEGETABLES 19 



are so essential to our growth and maintenance 

 of health. Here, indeed, we find one of the 

 strongest arguments for having our own garden. 

 I wish you could see the eagerness with which 

 my neighbor's children pluck and eat raw young 

 carrots. Paul told me he once ate fourteen, 

 and all three of them are as healthy as if they 

 ate nothing but *' vitamines," or mineral salts. 



I am often amused at the amazement with 

 which people stare at me when I tell them what 

 vegetables I eat raw — ^they couldn't look more 

 surprised if I were a giraffe with two necks, or 

 something of that sort. Simply because I add 

 com and peas and carrots and turnips and 

 asparagus to the things they eat raw, including 

 radishes, lettuce, melons, tomatoes, cabbage, 

 celery, onions, cucumbers, and forty kinds of 

 fruits and berries. My little nephew, after 

 eating one ear of com uncooked, always insisted 

 on having his cobs raw, because he found them 

 sweeter than the boiled or roasted ears; and 

 when I taught him to eat peas right from the 

 vine he exclaimed, enthusiastically, * 'Uncle, I 

 don't want mine cooked any more!" 



Most people prefer beef to veal; but in the 

 vegetable garden we want the veal, the young 

 plants, every time. Baby pod beans are a 

 million times better than the huge, dry, full- 

 grown pods which alone our greengrocers offer 

 for sale. Hence you should raise your own pod 

 beans. Plant only the stringless kind. Pole 



