1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



:.'45 



have nevor found it; and if some of our friends 

 in Holiaml willMiil im- ^onl(• nioie seeds like 

 those tlu-y sent nie belun-, 1 will gladly give 

 ?U).U() per lb. for tlieru. May be the seed ^ent 

 me was worth more than that. I do not 

 know how nnieh such Holland cabhaKe ini{iht 

 be worth. In the lirst i)lac'e, the seed was extra 

 large. It produced the lincst-, liealthiest, and 

 strongest plants 1 ever saw. Now, hold on ! 1 

 lo remember tiiat I planted the seeds after 

 sifting guano and lime into the seed-bed. This 

 helped lo give them tiieir vigor. iJut 1 did the 

 ■;am<> thing with the other cabbage seed. The 

 Holland cabbages grew belter than any thing I 

 3ver saw, before or since: and they kept right 

 ^n growing, and th(^y made heads" almost but 

 lot quite equal to the iaiporied Holland cab- 

 Dage?. I am sure the seed had something to do 

 .vith it. 



IVrhaps in the above I have told more what I 

 Jo )uit know than what 1 f7f; know; but I am 

 Mirc ii is in a direction where our people need 

 idvice and instruction. 



You know I once paid §.iO for half a pound of 

 Jrand Rapids lettuce seed. I paid it IJecause I 

 ;aw the crop riglil before my eyes. It is true, 

 [ did not see it by daylight, bul I saw erough 

 :iy hintcrn light to warrant me in taking the 

 ;hancps of investing my money. It was the 

 jest investment in ihe way of seeds I ever made 

 n my life: and then and there I gave it the 

 lame it now bears, and sent samples of that 

 lalf-pound of seed broadcast almost all over 

 :he world; and now the Grand Rapids lettuce 

 >eed is cataloged and recommended by almost 

 !very seedsman in the world. It has been 

 .vorth thousands of dollars to the gardeners, es- 

 jecially the greenhouse gardeners, of the world. 

 Please do not think that I am tinding fault 

 .vith our seedsmen. There is not a season that 

 masses but that surprises me because they do as 

 .veil as they do. I liave bought seeds more or 

 ess of almost all who send out nice catalogs; 

 ind I am actually astonished to lind every thing 

 io good and true, especially with the vast mul- 

 tiplicity of kinds. The catalog I have been 

 luoting from offers for sale 3.5 different kinds 

 3f muskmelons, and other goods in proportion. 

 As this seedsman gives prices by the 100 lbs., on 

 most of them. 1 am forced to believe there is a 

 regular and steady demand for the greater part 

 3f ihem. 



UNCLE .JAKE TALKS TO US ABOUT THE DIF- 

 FERENT QUALITY OF ONIONS. 



A. I. Oleenlngs—deer Sir: — I see you're great 

 3n onoins. Did you ever eat em biled in milk? 

 They haint so ranlv that way. We never 

 thought lop onoins, potato onoins. or multipli- 



rs. was as good as the old-la~liinned sort. You 

 isk about what's become of the old-fashinned, 

 top onoin-sels. Well, now. they haint so old- 

 fashinned, and, what's more, they haint near 

 so good, to my notion, as the sets raised from 

 black seed— little injens we always called em. 

 Isaac Tillinghast tells about raisin an acre of 



m. but ihe rest of you all seems to run to tops. 

 Now you git some of the regler old-fashinned 

 sort, plant em middlin early, then when they 

 git about a foot high, with buttons about as big 

 as your ting(M', some hoi day when you're pirly 

 hungry, jist pull some of them injens, and let 

 your wife dress em and put em in a tumbler of 

 sold water onto the table. They make a han- 



ome ornament. And they taste jist lushus. It 

 makes my mouth water to Ihink of it. The 

 way to eat em is to take some good bread and 

 butter, dip the end of the onoin in the salt, and 

 bite off what you want. They haint no cooked 

 Dnoin can begin to come up to a raw one. Not 

 when they're the right age, I mean. They 



must be young and delicate. Some likes jist 

 the while part, and eats tops and all. 



If you can't git the liitle onoins lo plant, you 

 can' raise some yourself, and then yon can liave 

 tlii-m for next year. Plant the .seed in drills 

 ollle thick. Th.ii you see tlicy cant hclj) but 

 grow litth — haint got room to grow liig. Some 

 takes a bairel and rolls over the lied lo break 

 down lh(! tops and slop them growin; but if you 

 put in the seed thick euuff that'senuff without 

 the baiTel. Jake Smith. 



[Very good, L'ncle Jake. The point you make 

 IS an important one; and since you mention it, 

 I believe I have heard people say that onions 

 raised from black seed, or, if you choose, sets 

 raised from black seed, give milder and ph-as- 

 anter onions than those raised from old-fash- 

 ioned top sets, and this improvement in (|uality 

 is probably the main reason why onions raised 

 from top sets are going out of use and out of 

 the market. If, however, ar)y one wishes to 

 buy them at the prices quoted in the seed -cata- 

 logs, I should very much like the fun of the 

 raising. I have just sent and got samples that 

 are advertised at .'?.").0() and .?(■).()() a bushel, and 

 they have not even pulled the top sets apart 

 and prepared them in nice shape for planting, 

 throwing out the dry shells, etc. Somebody 

 asked one of our agricultural editors why peo- 

 ple did not all of them plant sets instead. of 

 seed. The reply was. that sets were so expen- 

 sive that they were never used except for get- 

 ting extra early onions for bunching. The sets 

 produce bunching onions a good deal earlier 

 than where the seed are sown in the open air. 

 but the expense is so great for the sets, and for 

 planting them one at a time. that, unless we 

 get great prices for the crop, it will not pay. 

 Now, the new plan of raising onion i>lant^ in 

 the greenhouse comes right in lo compete suc- 

 cessfully with the onion-.set business. Let us 

 bear in mind that we can not afford to buy 

 onion-plants, nor onion-Sets either, except to 

 plant them very early indeed, to produce very 

 early crops and get big prices. Now. I wish 

 others would let me know if it is true that the 

 old-fashioned top sets produce onions of inferior 

 quality. The Egyptian onions grow from top 

 sets in this way. and most people liave found 

 out now that these onions are strong, and of 

 poor quality. They are so very hardy, how- 

 ever, that people will buy them when nc) other 

 kinds of green onions can be obtained. How 

 about the quality of the new irhite top sets ad- 

 vertised in some of the seed catalogs?] 



ONION-SETS— A QUERY. 



I raised 2V.< bushels of onion-sets last year 

 from ^4 lb. of seed. What has been your expe- 

 rience in raising sets? and when is the best 

 time to pull them? Will they not be all right 

 to pull when they are large enough for sets? 



Steamburg, Pa. MEiniiTT Baldwin. 



It would seem, from the inquiries made 

 through the various agricultural papers in re- 

 gard to raising onion-sets, that there is a great 

 liick of information in regard lo the subject. 

 The question above, as I understand it. is this: 

 If you sow your seed very thick, can you get 

 onion-sets by pullifig and curing the onions 

 when they are of a proper size for sets ? Well, 

 this depends. If you have dry weather, or your 

 ground is poor, or any thing gives the plants a 

 setback so that they mature small bulbs instead 

 of making onions, your plan will do all right. 

 A neighbor of ours sowed an acreof Globe Dan- 

 vers, and expected to get several hundred bush- 

 els of onions. In consequence of the dry weath- 

 er, however, they stopped growing, and many 

 of them began to ripen up, making bulbs so 



