Lettuce of Choicest Strain 



Summer 



THE first day of June and I am going to invite you into the dairy-plot with me. 

 A walk from the front gate where the lawn was showing green, flawers growing happily 

 and vines beginning to climb; past or through the little portable with its books, pictures, and 

 atmosphere of a busy life, out to the drive-turn m the middle of which was my vegetable fl3wer 

 bed. Here scarlet-runner beans were starting up the young oak saved from the fire's destruction. 

 Cardoon around the tree, now borage with its large hairy leaves and a tuft of buds in the center, then 

 peppers and a large circle of rampion gorgeous with its delicate violet bells and parsley bordering the 

 bed. 



Down the middle of the road (which by the way is not the middle but one-third the distance from 

 the north to the south fence) past the chicken house where the fowl were happily ensconced, a glimpse 

 of rhubarb raising its enormous leaves above some kegs and boxes placed about the crown. 



To the left the orchard, every tree showing rich foilage of superb color, here an apricot standing 

 out with its exquisite pinkish leaves, there a cherry almost black with intensity of vigor. The tomatoes 

 between the rows of trees showing at a glance which were potted and which from a nurseryman's seed- 

 bed, the former erect, sturdy, keeping right on with their life's work; the latter drooping, wilted, making 

 a hard struggle to gain a foothold. 



To the right the lettuce drilled in, emerald green and reddish brown, peas dwarfed yellowing show- 

 ing the need of an experimenter's mind and care in their behalf, radishes in the distance, rows upon 

 rows of them, with transplanted lettuce in every third row (this plot was singled out for super-intensive 

 cultivation). Next beets with tops of rich red and sombre green growing in ragged rows, more coming 

 up each day telling again of a prolonged successive yield, then onions telling the same story with cabbage 

 plantlets from a Huntington grower in the background. 



To the right an unplanted acre, heaps of old manure dotted upon it; this is to be the melon field, 

 near the house and in full view of our buildings, a wise location for melons. Next this field the potatoes 

 with a small boy, can in hand, picking the "potato bugs." The leaves show where bordeaux and paris 

 green had been applied the day before, but the Colorado beetle cared naught for its presence. 



The next acre shows queer patches of early cauliflower, early corn, and parsnips — a sad tale the 

 cauliflower tells of being raised with the heat loving tomatoes and then no one to cultivate it when it 

 had been set out but a few days. Here and there a huge one of superb color proclaimed where a bonfire 

 had burned last fall, telling better than words the value of wood pushes upon new land. To the right 

 of the road, the last acre before the dairy gate is reached, a patchwork quilt of true market-garden type. 

 First some beautiful cabbage plants of early Jersey Wakefield and All Head, grown in the same hotbed 

 as the cauliflower but feeling change much less; behind it a patch of tiny feathery carrots, the pride of 

 its planters' hearts because "old farmers" had none this year. Beside it oyster plant, green and white 

 endive in varying shades of tender green; next salsify and scorzonera looking like rows of grass. Nearer 

 to us and next the road a big patch that should have been spinach, but a few plants, however, proclaimed 

 the intent of the plot. Little harm was done by its loss, it required but thirty minutes to plant it and 

 but a few more cents for seed and we knew for another time it was unwise to plant it in April, the plot 



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