1891 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



635 



was not applied as evenly as a natural shower, 

 after all. and a good part of the ground looked 

 ■dry after about 48 hours. Even where you 

 have the best of appliances right on hand, it is 

 expensive work to irrigate by throwing the 

 water. In our market-garden stuff, it seems to 

 me it will be considerable trouble to run it in 

 the furrows: but I guess that running it in the 

 furrows will be the cheaiiest way aft.r all. One 

 difficulty is. that the ground must be graded so 

 that the water will run just fast enough and 

 not too fast. 



Perhaps I have been dull heretofore, but it 

 was an astonishment to me to find that the 

 sprav ol the steam-pump thrown high into the 

 air toward sundown will produce as h.indsome 

 a rainbow clear across the sky as anybody ever 

 saw put up by dame Nature. I sent Huber to 

 tfll the women- folks over at the house to come 

 over on Ernest's lawn and see tlu' beautiful 

 rainbow. No one came, however. They looked 

 ■out at the sky. and did not see any rainbow, 

 and wisely concluded there was not any. Then 

 I sent an invitation to the girls in the office to 

 come. They also looked out of the window, 

 but they didn't see any lainbow. and therefore 

 thought there wasn't any. and so did not come. 

 Yet a hundred persons while seated on the edge 

 ■of the lawn might have seen a most beautiful 

 rainbow spreading its perfect arch over the 

 whole heavens: and it was just as plainly 

 painted on the sky as the moon and stars that 

 have tlie sky for a background. The reason I 

 mention thisis because it illustrates so clearly 

 how ditferently things look from a special point 

 of view. On the la«n where I sat. there was a 

 rainbow. Over at the house and up in the office 

 there was not a speck of a rainbow, even if I 

 did say so. These good fiiends. however, might 

 say, '■ Well, what is a body to do? Can't one 

 believe the testimony of liis own eyes?" I an- 

 swer, " No. my friend, vou can not always be- 

 lieve the testimony of your eyes. The "state- 

 ment of a friend is very often rnore to be relied 

 upon than what you si'e with your own eyes, 

 or, if you choose, what you do *iof see." And 

 this brings out another great truth. There is 

 no rainbow across the sky under'any circum- 

 stances, and never wax. Next time you look 

 up and see a beautiful iiow placed thei'e by the 

 Almighty himself, remember that there is not 

 any bow there at all. The bow is really in your 

 ■own eye. and only seems to be on the sky. If 

 somebody disputes this, you just tell him it is 

 true, because Uncle Amos said so. 



RAISING celp;ry-pi.a>'ts. 



With all the celery there is planted out at the 

 present day, I have many times wondered 

 where people get all their plants: and I have 

 wondei'ed. too. how many seedsmen can offer 

 them so low if they are all transplanted. As 

 the seed catalogues lately do not say any thing 

 about transplanting. I am forced to conclude 

 that it has been, to a great extent, skipped or 

 omitted. But in that case I wonder how it is 

 that customers succeed in making them grow. 

 Where they are grown in the seed-bed. unless 

 the seed is carefully spread over considerable 

 ground, or unless the plants are thinned out 

 afterward, the result is a big spindling top with 

 vei'y little root. Transplanting is the only way 

 of getting even, regular-sized plants withlaige 

 brushy roots, that I know of. We have this 

 season succeeded in getting very early White 

 Plume celery without having scarcely a plant 

 send up a seed-stalk. In the tirst place, we got 

 Dui- seed of I^ivingston. of Columbus— the same 

 seed that gave us sucli beautiful plants last 

 Season. 1 think our tirst sowing was about Jan- 

 nary 1st. When the plants had two or thi-ee 

 second leaves they were put into shallow boxes 

 with the poultry-netting frames we have de- 



scribed. They were kept growing in the green- 

 house during the winter months; and by the 

 time they could go outdoors each plant had a 

 great bunch of bushy roots with comparatively 

 small tops. These roots had so interwoven 

 themselves through the shallow plant-boxes 

 that the whole coukl be taken out of the box, 

 like a sod of turf. We just took the butcher- 

 knife, and cut thissod up into little squares, each 

 plant being the center of a square. Although 

 this was a dry time when they were set out, 

 scarcely one plant in a thousand failed, and we 

 commenced selling the celery toward the last 

 of June. Now. there is one thing about raising 

 celery-plants that we have learned by experi- 

 ence. They will grow and do well where they 

 get almost no sunshine at all. Our plant-beds, 

 that were made some yeais ago at so much ex- 

 pense and pains, some of them having even the 

 sub-iirigation (of father Cole memory) under 

 them, we could not very well throw away with- 

 out quite a loss. The reason why they are tit 

 only for celery, is that the new buildings we 

 have been putting up have cut off most of the 

 sunshine. Well, for years back we were com- 

 ing to the conclusion that celery did as well as, 

 or even better, when shaded most of the time, 

 than when right in the sun. So this past sea- 

 sou we have put our cabbage-plants in our new- 

 garden across the road, and tilled the old plant- 

 beds and greenhouses entirely with celery, and 

 we never had celery do so nicely, suffer so little 

 loss in transplanting, with so little trouble in 

 shading. Wi-th a hose and sprinkler, we simply 

 keep the ground wet when it does not rain: and 

 almost every plant, even if put into the ground 

 by awkward boys, takes right hold and grows. 

 Now. if one wants to raise celery-plants for sale 

 as a business, he wants to use a place that will 

 be in the shade during a greater part of the 

 daytime. 



MAKING ONE CROP QUICKLY TAKE THE PLACE 

 OF ANOTHER. 



With our highly manured, thoroughly drain- 

 ed, high-priced ground, we can not afford to let 

 it lie idle any more than we can afford to let a 

 high-priced competent man stand around wait- 

 ing for a job. In fact, to make it pay. the 

 ground must be cropi>ed incessantly — certainly 

 during the summer time if not during the fall 

 and early spring, and sometimes even during the 

 winter. For an illustration, let us take Wake- 

 field cabbages. Some plants head up very 

 quickly — sometimes only two or three weeks 

 after they are put out into the ground, provid- 

 ing the soil is very rich and the plants are very 

 large and strong.' Well, aftei- the head is cut, 

 what then? Why, the cabbage then becomes 

 at once, to all intents and purposes, a weed. 

 Cabbage and cauliflower, with the heads cut 

 out. should not be tolerated on the ground for 

 24 hours. Pull them up. shake off the dirt, and 

 give them to the pigs: or. if there are too 

 manv. put them on the compost heap. Then 

 what? Why, plant another cabbage or cauli- 

 flower in its place, and so on. We have, in a 

 nice piece of ground, kept a continuous crop of 

 cabbages almost all summer. If you don't want 

 cabbages you can put in tomatoes, a hill of 

 white beaiis. melons, or squashes. But thei-e is 

 one objectionable feature about tiiLving crops 

 in this wav. It is a good deal more trouble to 

 gather them, and they are a good deal more lia- 

 ble to be neglected. If you fill up cabbages 

 with cdhbiige it makes no confusion in this way. 

 There are objections, howevei'. First, you can 

 not clear the ground off' entirely for some other 

 crop: second, the ground is liable to become 

 hard in the row. unless you spade up the place 

 where the plant has come out. before you put in 

 another, and this is too much work. Now for a 



