88 Johnson & sfoitfis 
if the seeds be permitted to mature, the vine will quickly 
perish. It is the purpose of the vine's existence to produce 
ripe seeds, and it will make repeated and long-continued 
efforts to accomplish this end. In gathering the cucumbers, 
it is important to avoid injuring the vine. Some growers 
use a knife; others break the stem by a dexterous twist, 
without injuring the vine in the least. 
It requires 300 cucumbers (more or less) of fair pickling 
size to make a bushel, and it is estimated that an acre will 
produce from 100 to 200 bushels, or even more. When the 
pickles are pulled while quite small, the number runs up to 
125,000 per acre; and the pickle factories in some cases make 
their estimates on a yield of 75,000 per acre. The price is 
variable, but often quite profitable. 
Downy Mildew — A disease which lately threatened to 
destroy the business of growing pickles in New Jersey and 
elsewhere, the downy mildew of the cucumber, can be fully 
overcome by spraying the vines with Bordeaux mixture. It 
requires six or seven applications, at intervals of a week or 
ten days, to conquer this comparatively new disease. Downy 
mildew is a fungous trouble affecting the leaves and destroy- 
ing the further usefulness of the vine. A recent New York 
experiment showed a yield of $173 worth of pickles per acre 
under spraying as against complete failure where the Bor- 
deaux mixture was not used. The cost of spraying was $9.50 
per acre, leaving $163.50 per acre as the value of the crop 
saved by the operation. 
EGG PLANT. 
The advisability of growing egg plants in farm garden- 
ing operations is a question of location. On a suitable soil, 
near a good market, the operation will be a profitable one, 
if rightly managed. The egg plant is a tender vegetable, 
botanically allied to both the tomato and the potato, but less 
