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Gleanings in Bee Culture 



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A. I. Root 



"feom producer to consumer;" a short 



CUT. 



Our good friend Philo made a great hit in 

 getting everybody to grow chickens in the 

 l5ack yard, because it inckides one of the 

 shortest cuts possible from producer to con- 

 sumer. Now, here is something else you 

 can do in your back yard besides growing 

 fresh eggs. Have a iittle garden. If you 

 have not room to have a garden larger than 

 your dining-room, have that kind of gar- 

 den, and put a good big load of manure on 

 it. Dig it up deep and work it into the 

 soil. Before you put on the manure, how- 

 ever, get rid of all sticks, stones, and rub- 

 bish. Have the ground fine and loose. 

 Now dig in the manure and work it down 

 deei^. Dig up the ground two feet deep if 

 you can stand it. Then put in your seed 

 and let the children help and become inter- 

 ested. For an illustration that comes home 

 to us just now, new potatoes are -worth 70 

 cts. a peck at the groceries, or $2.80 a bush- 

 el, when they can be raised for 35 cts. a 

 bushel. When I was up in Michigan last, 

 I told you the farmers were offered only 25 

 cts. a bushel. You may say that all soils 

 are not suitable for growing potatoes. Well, 

 I will tell you how to make them suitable. 

 I knew it already, but I have just been re- 

 minded of it by visiting a neighbor's little 

 garden. He is a man of about my age, but 

 he gets enjoyment and profit out of his lit- 

 tle garden. Well, last fall, after gardening 

 was over, and just before freezing, he had 

 the little garden spaded up in tall ridges. I 

 think the tops of the ridges were about 

 three feet apart, and the dirt was thrown up 

 so it was almost three feet high from the 

 bottom of the furrow to the top of the ridge. 

 He evidently threw it up as high as it would 

 stand, and this not only enabled the frost 

 to pulverize every part of it, but these ridges 

 were dry in the spring long before the level 

 ground, and he put in potatoes, radishes, 

 peas, and a great lot of hardy stuff in the 

 latter part of March or fore part of April. 

 As a consequence he had early potatoes of 

 his own growing at exactly a time when 

 they were 70 cts. a peck in the market, and 

 there is plenty of time to grow more stuff, 

 or a second crop on the same ground. It 

 paid him big for all his time and trouble. 



You may say that potatoes are not hardy. 

 Down in our Florida home one of our neigh- 

 bors planted a great lot of choice early pota- 

 toes. He is a bee-keeper from York State, 

 and brought the seed from there. The folks 

 w'ho lived around there said it was too ear- 

 ly, and that very likely the potatoes would 

 get nipped by the frost. Yes, they did get 

 nipped, and he and his wife were feeling 

 blue to think they had lost all their pota- 

 toes; but, to their happy surprise, some 

 favorable weather came right away after- 

 ward, and new shoots put up just below 

 where the frost had done damage, and in 

 just a few days nobody would know that 



the frost had ever touched them. They 

 had all the table potatoes they could use, 

 and sold some to the neighbors and to us; 

 and I think they were about the nicest po- 

 tatoes I ever tasted. 



Now in regard to our little back-yard gar- 

 den. If a frost comes, you can cover this 

 up without much trouble, and it will be a 

 great help to you to have two or three hot- 

 bed sashes in which to sprout a few potatoes 

 and grow vegetable-plants before you put 

 them out in the open ground. You will 

 have the very best of early vegetables. 

 They will not be stale when you get them, 

 and no middleman will have any thing to 

 do with the profit. The Rural New - Yorker 

 tells us that a farmer gets only about 35 or 

 40 cents of the dollar that his crops sell 

 for. With this little back-yard garden he 

 will have 100 cents of the dollar for every 

 thing grown, and have it fresh. By the 

 way, do you know that green peas, green 

 corn, and many other things are very much 

 better if they are cooked just when they are 

 picked? We have found this so true that 

 Mrs. Root and I pick our green peas in the 

 evening, when it is cool and shady, and 

 cook them as soon as shelled, over a little 

 75-cent gasoline-stove. You know we do 

 not have any suppers, so the cooked peas 

 are just set away ready for breakfast. They 

 can be quickly warmed up for breakfast, or 

 kept over night in the fireless cooker, and 

 then they will be already warm. Now, if 

 you do not have such a little garden when 

 this reaches you, you can start it right now, 

 and grow a great lot of stuff (including ear- 

 ly potatoes) before frost comes again. 



POTATOES SHIPPED FROM FLORIDA TO ALAS- 

 KA. 



We clip the following from the .Jackson- 

 ville, Fla., Times -Union: 



The Hastings potato-growers closed the most 

 prosperous year they have known, Wednesday of 

 last week. Aboiit 1200 cars were shipped from the 

 entire section. Something of a sensation was cre- 

 ated in the prodiice world by an order from a Se- 

 attle firm for three carloads of Hastings potatoes 

 which they wanted to fill an order from Alaska — 

 one extremity of the United States supplying an- 

 other with this delicacy. 



I am very glad to know that raising Irish 

 potatoes for the early northern markets is 

 getting to be a great industry in Florida. 

 Growing potatoes in Florida to ship by the 

 carload north is certainly a praiseworthy 

 undertaking, providing, of course, the rail- 

 road companies wall do their best to help 

 their fellow-men by making the lowest pos- 

 sible rates of transportation. The great 

 reason why we have peace and plenty, at 

 least to a considerable extent, in every spot 

 of our glorious country, is because of the 

 tremendous strides that are being made in 

 the way of transjiortation. When we get to 

 sending potatoes by the Wright flying ma- 

 chines from Florida to Alaska I will give a 

 write-up of the event — that is, if Clod per- 

 mits me to live long enough. 



