1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



193 



talk back and forth through the telephone, 

 and they were learning to do business. Now, 

 then, dear fathers and mothers, when you get 

 your children to doing business with postal 

 cards you are helping them a great lot in the 

 way of a practical education, and you are help- 

 ing the subscription clerk here at the Home 

 of the Honey-bees a great lot also. By the 

 way, let me say to you that, since Blue Eyes 

 is married, her younger sister, Miss Carrie 

 Belle Root, has taken charge of the list, and 

 she is very an.x'ions to have every one keep on 

 taking Gleanings, if it is really proving help- 

 ful. 



Just one thing more: You know we have 

 been giving exceedingly liberal premiums dur- 

 ing the past few months ; in fact, I have al- 

 most been scolding the boys because they were 

 so reckless in making offers to people who sub- 

 scribe. Now, a good many of our old friends 

 do not care for premiums. They just want 

 Gleanings itself. Sometimes they have 

 means so they would just as soon pay in ad- 

 vance as not ; and this method saves all mis- 

 understandings and unpleasant tangles. In 

 order to assist this class of people we will send 

 Gleanings two years for $1.50; three years 

 for $2.00 ; five years for $3.00. Sometimes 

 several in the same neighborhood club togeth- 

 er and take advantage of the above reduced 

 rates. Now, dear friends, remember that Car- 

 rie and I have charge of the subscription list ; 

 and oh our part we are going to try hard and 

 not let any selfishness creep in. We are go- 

 ing to try to let our readers know that we be- 

 lieve in my favorite little text, "Thou shalt 

 love thy neighbor as thyself." 



HOW TO SUPPORT A FAMILY ON A QUARTER OF 

 AN ACRE OF GROUND. 



Our readers will perhaps remember that this 

 is the title of one department of our tomato- 

 book. Of course, this quarter of an acre must 

 be for gardening under glass. Well, when you 

 first make your beds, fill them with rich soil 

 and have the side boards all straight and 

 plumb, sound wood, every thing will work 

 nicely. But you will notice, after running 

 this quarter-acre farm one or more winters, 

 and especially after zero freezes, that the boards 

 will be getting out of shape through the in- 

 fluence of frost and w^t. If the ground is 

 higher inside of the beds than the paths where 

 you walk in, the freezing of the ground while 

 the beds are not in use tends to spread the 

 boards or plank that support the sashes. And, 

 by the way, our beds were nearly all made of 

 heavy inch hemlock boards. They ought to 

 be \%, \}i, or, better still, 2 inch plank; then 

 when supported by the plan given on page 112 

 of the tomato-book they will be tolerably sub- 

 stantial. Notwithstanding, after the freezing 

 and thawing during the winter the boards will 



spread more or less. Our remedy so far has 

 been to drive down oak stakes about 2 inches 

 square, the stakes, of course, being driven in 

 line by a cord stretched from one end of the 

 bed to the other; then nail the board securely 

 to said stakes, and saw them off low enough 

 so they will not hold the sash up and let in 

 the frost. But I do not like the stakes; first, 

 because they rot off ; then the next heavy 

 frost is liable to pull them out and get things 

 out of shape again. 



This spring we are adopting another plan 

 with our old and rickety beds. If your sash 

 are 6 feet long, you want to cut up some strips 

 of dressed pine, say 1x3 inches, just long 

 enough to go across the bed, slipping down 

 between the boards. With 6-feet sash these 

 strips will need to be about 3 inches less than 

 6 feet in length. Now get out some more sim- 

 ilar strips, only narrower and longer — say 1 % 

 inches wide by six feet long. Nail these nar- 

 row strips right in the center of the wider 

 ones, projecting equally beyond each end of 

 the wider ones. Now, if you lay this across 

 the bed the narrow strip will catch on the top 

 while the wide one goes down between the 

 side boards. When the sash are in place they 

 lie on top of the wide strip and come up 

 against the narrow one, making a close joint 

 to keep out frost. Now, this cross-piece, when 

 pushed in place, will hold the side boards apart 

 wherever they get too near together; but in 

 order to bring them closer, if they get too far 

 apart we need some pieces of heavy galvanized 

 strap iron, bent in the shape of a letter L. The 

 long part of the L is to be put between the 

 two strips of wood before they are nailed to- 

 gether. To start with, two holes should be 

 drilled in this long part for nails to go through 

 and clinch. The short part of the L is to 

 reach down over the outside of the side-boards 

 to the bed. We have just had a lot of these 

 cross-bars made, and painted red. We have 

 them painted red so the boys can see them 

 more readily when they want one. Now, in 

 handling sash in any bed, whenever the sash 

 do not reach, and threaten to drop down and 

 mash the plants in the bed, just go for one of 

 these bars. If you can not bring the sides of 

 the bed up into place by hand, dig away the 

 soil inside a little, and crowd up the refractory 

 board with a crowbar; then crowd down your 

 cross-bar, and put on your sashes. When- 

 ever you are spading up a bed, the crossbar can 

 be easily pulled off ; and after the said bars 

 have been kept in place until the ground is 

 well settled and warm, the sides of the bed 

 will probably stay till winter. Anybody who 

 has been vexed and annoyed by having sashes 

 drop down on the plants will readily appre- 

 ciate this invention. 



These crossbars serve another excellent pur- 

 pose. Later in the season, when the frosts 

 are not so severe, cotton cloth answers very 

 well in place of glass. See description for the 

 way it is used, in the first part of the tomato- 

 book. By all means have your cotton cloth 

 so it can be rolled up. Cotton cloth stretched 

 on frames, I would not have around. The 

 very fact that the wind blows them about so, 

 is objection enough. Well, you can use the 



