248 



LITTLE KNOWN VEGETABLES 



LITTLE KNOWN VEGETABLES AND HOW TO KEEP 



UP A CONTINUOUS INCOME. 



H. B. FULLERTON, Medford, Long Island. 



The profession of farming has only one serious defect; as 

 pursued in the past the farmer had eleven months' outgo to 

 one month's income. No other business in the world could 

 stand it. The market gardener, who is really a very new 

 comer in the United States, went the farmer several better. 

 He reversed things, making three-quarters of the year yield 

 him income and only one-quarter off season, when everything 

 was outgo. Down at the Long Island Railroad Experiment 

 Stations we have earnestly sought for w^ays and means, and 

 that signifies varieties, that would enable us to keep the farm 

 income on exactly the same basis on which all successful 

 manufacturing and commercial businesses are conducted, that 

 is, with income continuous outgo minimum. We start with 

 rhubarb. As forced rhubarb lacks flavor, we did not raise 

 it in houses, but in the open, and we hurry it up by placing 

 half a barrel or a box about the plants and without any other 

 aid get rhubarb from ten days to two weeks earlier, the reason 

 being that we shut off the wind and the barrels retain a good 

 deal, at least, of the heat which always comes during the 

 spring days. This rhubarb, hurried along a little, is salable 

 when rhubarb exposed to the wind is but barely expanding 

 the leaves and has no stalk to speak of. Stalks raised in the 

 barrel bring five cents each, while two weeks later, when 

 everybody has rhubarb to sell, a bunch is worth but a cent 

 and a half. Asparagus comes in next and before rhubarb is 

 finished. We have not done anjrthing towards hurrying this 

 up beyond the old time early breaking of the ground and 

 letting warm air in early and getting particularly strong 

 growth the previous summer by the use of soy beans planted 

 between the rows. Spinach, planted last fall, gives us an- 

 other good income yielder at about the same time rhubarb 

 comes in. The best rhubarb we have found is Mj^att Lin- 

 naeus; the best asparagus, the Charles Prescott strain of 

 Palmetto. This famous Concord, Massachusetts, grower now 

 tells us that he has found something superior in the Reading 



