1891 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



67 



foreign onions, for they are not, suitable for 

 keeping: and with much wet weather they may 

 rot on your hands, or even while in the ground. 

 Our Experiment Station gives the preference to 

 the Spanish King, or Prize-taker, onion. Tliese 

 will grow as large as the oniuns that are im- 

 ported in fancy crateS. 



I notice in the agricultural papers there 

 have been several claims as to the originator of 

 this new method of raising onions. Like most 

 of these new (?) things, however, it often trans- 

 pires they are not new at all. The Oliio Farmer 

 gives an article from some one who has been 

 for many years doing this same thing by start- 

 ing onion seed in an ordinary hot-bed. 



If you are going into the business you had 

 better arrange to commence selUng the onions as 

 soon as you can pick out one here and there the 

 size of a hen's egg. Peel them, cut off the roots, 

 tie them in neat bunches, and deliver them 

 around to the houses before they have a chance 

 to get dry. If you get them real early you can 

 commence by putting- only half a pound in a 

 bunch. In almost any neighborhood they will 

 go off at a nickel a bunch — that is, if nobody is 

 ahead of you. When they begin to go slow, 

 give three-fourths, and then a whole pound for 

 a nickel; and finally, if you get a nickel for a 

 2-lb. bunch you are not doing a very bad busi- 

 ness, especially if you have a yield of any thing 

 like a tlionsand bushels per acre. tSnch onions 

 will sell almost every month in the year. The 

 Experiment Station lias tested this plan for rais- 

 ing ordinary onions, to be sold by the bushel 

 or barrel in the dry state, and think it a suc- 

 cess. You can have your rows absolutely 

 straight, and you can have just enough onions 

 in your row without any thinning, and you get 

 rid entirely of han (l-ircrding I am inclined to 

 think they are right about it. It will, however, 

 necessitate some sort of hot-beds, cold-frames, 

 or greenhouses: and if you are going to use the 

 onions green, you ought to be near a town or 

 city. 



HOW TO BE SUKE OF GOOD SEEDS. 



When our good friend Landreth inaugtu-ated 

 the plan of cremation, or burning up all the 

 seeds before the 1st of January, I thought it 

 was going to be a wonderfnl advance; but I 

 have changed my mind somewhat. There are 

 a few sorts of seeds that had better be burned 

 up — parsnip, salsify, and perhaps onion. All 

 the rest are nearly if not quite as good for an- 

 other year. Instead of burning up the onion, 

 however, I would use th(un to raise onion-sets, 

 or so\\' them thick in the greenhouse, as men- 

 tioned above. We have sowed onion seed two 

 years old for several years, for the above pur- 

 poses. I have been surprised to find that, many 

 times, thev grew just about as well as new seed. 

 Parsnip seed you can not use in this way. 

 Beans and corn rarely germinate as fully when 

 two years old; but by sowing them thicker you 

 may get a very tolerable stand. Tiiere is a dif- 

 ficulty, however. If they should all happen to 

 grow, we should have to thin them out; and 

 thinning out corn where it is a good deal too 

 thick is very expensive business. In fact. I 

 have found it to take more time than all the 

 hoeing and cultivating. On the other hand, if 

 only half the seeds grow, and we have many 

 vacancies, that is bad. It-is true, we can i)lant 

 in some more: but if you do this, unless you 

 have vei'y careful hands to gather your ears for 

 market they will be all the while giving cus- 

 tomers some that is too hard or some that is not 

 mature enough. By the way, I have practiced 

 transplanting corn, and have sometimes thought 

 that, for extra early corn, it paid verv well. 

 You can get rid of tlie weeds, get rid" of the 

 frosts, and get a perfect f^tand. 



Now, then, I want to say something in favor 

 of 0/(7 seeds. Almost every season we have 

 more or less seed that pleases better than any 

 other we ever had before. We had the finest 

 White Plume celery this last season that I ever 

 saw or heard of. The seed was purchased of 

 Livingston, of Columbus. I almost quarreled 

 with him because he charged me so much. I 

 even talked of sending it back. vVhen he as- 

 sured me, however, that the seed was extra, I 

 consented to keep it. Well, we have now about 

 4 lbs. of that seed left. What do you suppose I 

 would take for it? Why, I should hate to sell 

 it for twice the regular price, and take my 

 chances on something I had not tested. Peter 

 Henderson said, a good many years ago, that 

 he did not dare to offer celery seed for sale until 

 he had first tested it one season, and I am be- 

 ginning to agree with him exactly. Some years 

 ago we were greatly pleased with a nice lot of 

 White Egg turnips. I Ixiutrht a bagful of the 

 seed, and put it in our catalogue. We sold it 

 three years. But our turnips were always bad 

 shaped, tough, and stringy. I kept trying these 

 on different land, thinking the soil was not 

 suitable. Last fall, however, we sent to Liv- 

 ingston for some White Egg turnip seed, and 

 were rejoiced to find beautiful bulbs, tender 

 and sweet. In fact, they were sweeter than the 

 Purple-top Globe. But right here comes in an- 

 other trouble. These last were sown on that 

 beautiful piece of ground where I turned under 

 the Sharpless strawberries (and put on so many 

 ashes) — the ground that gave such beautiful 

 radishes in just thirty days. Now. I did not 

 .sow any of my old White Egg turnip seed on 

 this nice ground. I became disgusted, and tried 

 only the n(nv. So you see we are all at sea. I 

 do know this, liow'ever, that Livingston's seed 

 is good with nice ground. 



Under the circumstances I do not dare to use 

 the old seed again until I have tried a row side 

 by side with the new. I have been afraid that 

 some of our large seedsmen (especially where 

 they offer seeds at a very low price) save their 

 seed indiscriminately from every plant that 

 produces seed. Suppose they should save seed 

 from a turnip that jM-oduced scarcely any bulb 

 at all: or from radishes that just ran up to seed 

 the first thing they did. Last season we sowed 

 a lot of carrots very early. Well, in the fall a 

 great lot of them ran up to seed. Our celery 

 does this more or less every season. Suppose 

 somebody should save seed and offer it for sale, 

 from celery that shot right up to a seed -stalk 

 the first thing. I do not know positively, but I 

 presume such .seed would not be worth much if 

 any thing. We want to be slow, however, in 

 drawing conclusions. I will tell you why. I 

 once condemned some radishes because they all 

 ran up to seed without making any bulbs at all. 

 I called the seed -giower a fjvMfc/. Well, I was 

 so much disgusted that I let them go and ripen 

 their pods. The seed fell out and dropped on 

 the ground, during the cool fall weather, which 

 seemed to be just suitable, and brought forth a 

 great quantity of most beautiful radishes. I 

 judged it was the dry hot weather that made 

 the radishes behave so badly in the spring, 

 and that it was the cool fall weather that made 

 the seed from these same radishes do so nicely 

 afterward. Still, it will surely pay to be very 

 careful about the seeds you sow. Let me give 

 you an illustration. 



About the first of J)me we received an order 

 for 20 cents' worth of Fottler's Brunswick cab- 

 bage seed. Our friend sowed the seed, and I 

 guess about every one grew. He put out the 

 plants and raised a fine field of cabbages. He 

 says, however, that the cabbages made nice 

 hard heads of Jersey Wakefield. He wanted 

 large cabbages to put away for winter. Nobody 



