428 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



wheel. Friend N. was away from home ; but I 

 had a very pleasant visit with the wife and 

 family. One of the little girls was just coming 

 home from the postoffice with Gleanings in 

 her hand ; so you see they knew a good deal 

 about me, even if I did not know very much 

 about them. I enjoyed my visit very much at 

 Willowdale Nursery. We discussed the new 

 " iron-clad " plums that the cutculio can not 

 bite because its teeth are not stiong enough: 

 and then I went up among the bee-hives, and 

 saw the sections being filled with honey from 

 fruit-blotjsoms. They said it was the first time 

 they had ever known bees to work in sections 

 in April, and I do not know but it is the first 

 time I have ever seen them do it here in our 

 locality. 



Just before crossing the border, as nearly as I 

 can make it out, that separates the land of 

 Canaan from the rest of the world, I passed a 

 piece of woodland partly cleared up. Well, the 

 whole surface of the ground under the trees 

 was covered with wild fiowers to such an extent 

 that it looked as if it were covered with snow, 

 except that the snow was pink instead of white. 

 But no snow ever exhaled such a wondrous 

 perfume as came from that woodland lot just 

 over the fence. No wonder I thought of a land 

 flowing with milk and honey. Before I left I 

 was treated to a gla<s of luscious milk, and, I 

 might add, some of the honey gathi'red from 

 fruit-blooti) in April, had I stopped long enough 

 to remove it from the hives. 



I was 1.5 miles from home, and it was well 

 toward night; but with the little light Victor 

 Flyer I made the first 6 miles in 30 minutes— or, 

 to be exact, jnst 29 minutes. The rest of the 

 road, however, was so much of it climbing hills 

 that I did not keep up so much speed. Just 

 think of it— 32 miles after two o'clock in the 

 afternoon, on a little wheel that I carry about 

 easily with one hand, and not a bit tired at 

 that! My impression is, that the new wood 

 rim is a little more springy, and bounces over 

 obstructions with less injury, than a wheel 

 made all of metal. 



GARDENING IN THE MONTH OF MAY. 



I do not know, friends, but my talk will be 

 all gardening this month, and nothing else; 

 but if you could take a look out of the window 

 where I sit dictating just now, and catch a 

 view of the plant-beds of that quarter-acre 

 (that is to support afamUij you know), you 

 would not be much surprised; for I tell you 

 that the plant-bed garden promises to bud and 

 blossom, and bring forth, more than even an- 

 ticipated. One thing begins to be evident: It 

 takes quite a little time to get the soil in any 

 plant-bed up to its best. The way we proceed 

 now is first to spade up the soil in the bed 

 down quite deep, say a foot or more. Our good 

 friend Ben, with his German thoroughness (as 

 well as strength), is getting to be quite an ex- 

 pert in the way of "making up the beds." 

 When he first came here he could not talk Eng- 

 lish; and while working for me he has not only 

 learned to talk, but to read and write. I notice 

 he writes the names of the plants on the labels 

 very neatly. Well, he does not talk very much 

 — probably because his tongue does not rattle 

 oft English quite as glibly as do those of the 

 small boys all around him who are setting out 

 plants. Another thing, Ben's mind is so wholly 



occupied by his work that he has not time to 

 talk very much. Well, even if he does not say 

 so, I know he enjoys working in the plant-beds 

 better than almost any other work. This he 

 shows by his actions. Well, he has learned 

 just how to spade up the bed and work in the 

 stable manure. We put in from one-fourth to 

 one-third manure in each bed. Instead of 

 " spading " I should say "' forking," for it is all 

 done with a potato-fork; and while forking it 

 up, every forkful gets a clip from the four- 

 tined instrument, to pulverize the soil as much 

 as possible. After forking, it is further chop- 

 ped un with a wide steel-toothed rake. Then 

 the whole of it is sifted with the machine 

 shown below. 



PULVERIZING AND MIXING THE SOIL IN PLANT- 

 HE D8. 



I have given a picture of this before, but it 

 proves to be of so much importance that it will 

 do no harm to give it again. You can make 

 one yourself, or you can buy one of the dealers 

 who keep them for sifting sand, gravel, etc. 

 We use two screens of this kind — one coarse and 

 the other fine. E'or a new bed we used the 

 coarse one. Perhaps six inches of the chopped- 

 up earth and manure is shoveled on the screen. 

 A small boy, with the back of a short-handled 

 rake, rubs and pounds the dirt on the screen, 

 to make it go through; then Ben shovels the 

 coarse trash — manure and lumps of dirt — away 

 from the bottom of the screen, and spreads it 

 out where the dirt has just been shoveled off. 

 The screen is then moved along. The result is, 

 that all the coarse stuff is at the bottom of 

 the bed, and you have nothing but soft fine 

 soil mixed with the manure, on the surface of 

 the bed. We rarely get an extra crop the first 

 time a bed is made up. If we had good rich 

 garden soil and very fine old manure, such as 

 they sometimes find where they move an old 

 barn or stable away (just think of it, friends, 

 the amount of fertility that lies idle year after 

 year under almost every old barn and stable in 

 our land), there would be no difficulty. Well, 

 even if we do not get a full crop the first plant- 

 ing, we are getting the ground into " heart" as 

 the old-countrymen say. The next time one 

 spades it up— that is, after the first crop is off — 

 he brings the old manure and trash to the top. 

 It is now a good deal rotted, and will work up 

 nicely. But we manage to put in some kind of 

 manure at almost every time of working it. Of 

 late I have been paying 2.') cents a barrel for 

 poultry manure, and for a time I thought it did 

 not pay very well; but I can tell you now how 

 to ?»xa7ie it pay. A few days ago we got some 

 that was quite old and dry. I told Ben it would 

 have to be rubbed through the screen along 

 with the soil in the beds; and as the bed had 

 been, almost ever since it was made, rather 



