•^ TIMING VEGETABLES 133 



am particularly fond of cantaloupes, but can't 

 raise them up here because, as I have said 

 before, the nights are too cold and the season 

 is too short. Well, I dreamed that I was going to 

 have for breakfast ripe melons raised in my 

 garden from seed in three weeks. How did I 

 do it, when the time-table says three months? 

 By crossing the coy and dilatory cantaloupe 

 with the forward and prolific cucumber, and 

 then hybridizing the new vine with the radish, 

 which is ready to eat in three weeks after the 

 seed is put in the ground. I had read in Bur- 

 bank's books that almost anything can be done 

 in the way of training and intermarrying vege- 

 tables, keeping the good qualities of each while 

 eliminating the bad ones; and my experiment 

 didn't, in my dream, seem much more impossible 

 than his trick of * 'growing potatoes on tomato- 

 vines." But when I looked up his seventh 

 volume, which is concerned with the higher 

 education of vegetables, I found that, in his 

 experience, the cucumber "refuses to hybridize 

 with other melons"; and thus my scheme was 

 shattered. 



I am now considering the possibility of graft- 

 ing melon vines on witch-grass roots, which seem 

 to travel at the approximate rate of a yard a 

 day while sending up fresh roots every three 

 inches. When that is accomplished I should 

 like to see anyone get ahead of me in the 

 melon market. There's millions in it. 



