988: 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUUE. 



Dec. 



ly. The consequence will be, probably, they 

 will pick a lot that are not yet ready to pick. 

 Last summer one of our very good girls 

 picked about two bushels of shell beans, 

 when she was sent to pick string beans. She 

 was picking by the bushel, and, in her anxi- 

 ety to make good wages, she did not notice 

 the difference. It was all caused by the 

 string beans being in tico places instead of 

 one place. Another time, a grown-up man 

 with a family, and one whom you would 

 think would know how to pick green corn, 

 picked a lot of corn when hardly an ear 

 was fit for use. If the corn had been all in 

 one place, this would not have happened. I 

 could go on enumerating mistakes and mis- 

 understandings that have cost us time and 

 money, all of which could have been avoid- 

 ed liad our crops been divided off and placed 

 in nice order, each different kind by itself. 

 If you plant all your crops, and gather them 

 all yourself, this in part might be avoided ; 

 but if your grounds are mixed up, a little 

 bit here and a little bit there, you will find 

 liourself skipping and forgetting something 

 tliat ought to have l)een gathered before it 

 got too old. During the past season we had 

 cucumbers in live different places on our 

 grounds, and we have scarcely a man or boy 

 who would go over the whole of them witli- 

 out forgetting or skipping one patch or an- 

 other until the cucumbers were too old to 

 sell. The same with summer squashes. 



How shall we manage to sow all the seed, 

 and yet have it just till the allotted space 

 of ground, and have each crop all in one 

 place V There are several things to be con- 

 sidered in order to accomplish this. One 

 reason why we had cucumbers in so many 

 places was because we put them in where 

 some crop failed. How shall we manage so 

 as to have no failures V Can it be done V 

 I think it can. Have good seed that you 

 have tested in the house, or in a hot-l)ed or 

 greenhouse; or, better still, in the open 

 ground, tlic i/eur before. This latter plan 

 will not apply to a few kinds of vegetables, 

 but it will to the greater part of them. Seed 

 that gave you a nice crop and a nice stand 

 in 188H will, almost without exception, give 

 you also a nice crop in 1887. The few ex- 

 ceptions are, parsnips, onions, and leeks. 

 Peter Henderson says he would just as soon 

 have every thing else two years old, and no 

 more, as to have seeds just gathered. An- 

 other advantage of using seeds that have 

 given excellent satisfaction the year liefore 

 is, that there is no mist.ake or misvuuler- 

 standing jiboni having the i-x.tit thing yon 



want ; for I tell you it is a terrible loss to 

 And, after your crop is ready to harvest, that 

 it is not what you meant to have it. 



The matter of using the same seed for two 

 successive seasons also helps us in having 

 just so much ground for the crop, and hav- 

 ing it all in one place. Vou see, you can lay 

 out your ground in the winter, on paper, 

 then sow enough seed to till the allotted 

 space, and put the rest away until next sea- 

 son ; that is, when your seed is fresh. There 

 is another advantage here : Yoxx have whole 

 row's, and no pieces of a row. Sometimes 

 yon fuss more with a piece of a row, or in- 

 jure the plants of half of it in cultivating, 

 than the row is worth. By having all of 

 each crop in one place we are also enabled 

 to have long rows, thus facilitating the mat- 

 ter of cultivation. See Chapter XVI. You 

 are also under the necessity of having but 

 one label ; whereas, if you had two patches 

 you would have to have two labels. You 

 may regard this as a small matter; l)ut 

 there are few things in raising crops that 

 have made us more troulde than the matter 

 of labeling. We have over and over again 

 resolved tliat. no matter liovv hurried we 

 were, every crop should l>e plainly labeled at 

 the time it was planted. But year after 

 year we come face to face with the sad fact 

 that some crop we either want or don't want 

 has no laljel on it ; therefore we have no 

 means of securing exactly the same another 

 season, tn- of avoiding the same another 

 season. .Vs an illustration : \\> planted a 

 patch of Hubbard squashes. I got a little 

 impatient of some delays at the time it was 

 put in, and suggested that there was no 

 need of a label. l)ecause everybody knew 

 Hubbard squashes as soon as they began to 

 fruit. So the squash-patch did not have any 

 label. Now, does it not really seem reason- 

 aljle there was no need of any label on Hub- 

 bard squashes? In two or three weeks it 

 was evident that the seed was old or poor, 

 for the plants did not come up, even though 

 the weather and soil were favorable. Then 

 the question arose, Did we buy this Hub- 

 Ijard squash-seed of Henderson. Landreth, 

 or of ( iregoryV The package containing the 

 seed was thrown away — no one could tell. 

 But I suggested that some other squashes be 

 planted at one side of the hills, that would 

 mature in a shorter time than the Ilubbards. 

 By putting them to one side we gave the 

 Hubljards a chance to come up if they want- 

 ed to. If they didn't, the others could have 

 the cToiiud. Xii IkIicU irerc put on the last 

 S(-ul , an<l when lliev began to be lit for use. 



