i8o Home Vegetable Gardening 



Place part of these on clean straw in a coldframe, 

 giving pfotection, where they w^ill gradually ripen 

 up. Place others, that are fully developed but not 

 ripe, in straw in the cellar. In this way fresh toma- 

 toes may frequently be had as late as Christmas. 



Turnip: — These roots, if desired, can be stored 

 as are beets or carrots. 



It is hard to retain our interest in a thing when 

 most of its usefulness has gone by. It is for that 

 reason, I suppose, that one sees so many forsaken 

 and weed-grown gardens every autumn, where in 

 the spring everything was neat and clean. But there 

 are two very excellent reasons why the vegetable 

 garden should not be so abandoned — to say nothing 

 of appearances ! The first is that many vegetables 

 continue to grow until the heavy frosts come; and 

 the second, that the careless gardener who thus for- 

 sakes his post is sowing no end of trouble for him- 

 self for the coming year. For weeds left to them- 

 selves, even late in the fall, grow" in the cool moist 

 weather with astonishing rapidity, and, almost be- 

 fore one realizes it, transform the well kept garden 

 into a ragged wilderness, where the intruders have 

 taken such a strong foothold that they cannot be 

 pulled up without tearing everything else with them. 

 So we let them go — and. left to themselves, they 

 accomplish their purpose in life, and leave upon the 

 ground an evenly distributed supply of plump ripe 



