April, 1889. 
83 
£j2 
ORCHRRD. 
GARDEN 
Mr. Massey justly praises, but the Montreal 
Market, in flavor as well as size, far surpass- 
ed them all, and this has been our experience 
for the past three years. 
The Montreal Market has one disadvant- 
age; it is rather a late melon for this sec- 
tion — Western New York — but that can 
easily be overcome by starting the plants on 
inverted sods in a hot bed about the last of 
April, and then putting them out when all 
danger of frost is over. Plenty of manure, 
or other fertilizer, is necessary if you wish 
to get this melon in perfection, (and this is 
equally true of all varieties of melons) , but 
when these conditions have been fulfilled 
you will get a very large and handsomely 
shaped melon, with very thick, green flesh, 
very juicy, sweet, but still spicy, and alto- 
gether delicious. 
I hope Mr. Massey will try this melon 
again, and also the Miller’s Cream, which 
is even earlier than the Emerald Gem, has 
the same dark rind, and thick orange-colored 
flesh, is very much larger, fully equals it in 
productiveness, and surpasses it in flavor. 
If Mr. Massey does try the Montreal Market 
again, will he not let the readers of the 
Orchard & Garden know how it succeeds ? 
Is it possible that Western New York and 
not Virginia is especially favorable to it? — 
M. M.H. 
Japan* ho Vegetables. 
With the exception of the rice field, all 
Japanese farms are really vegetable gardens; 
at least in appearance. The different crops 
are cultivated on little or I4 acre lots, the 
farms are unseparated by fences unless it 
be an occasional row of tea plants to sup- 
ply the family beverage. All the work is 
done by hand. The Japanese being no meat 
eaters, vegetables necessarily supply a very 
important part of their food. With this as 
an incentive and a climate in which almost 
any plant will thrive, as an assisting agent, 
they should have the best vegetables in the 
world. But the native vegetables, with 
very few exceptions, are failures as edibles, 
though they may be quite interesting as 
curiosities. 
Beans stand first in value; they have five 
distinct species, comparatively unknown in 
the west, each having many varieties, the 
Glycine hispida alone numbering upwards 
of sixty. This bean forms one of the chief 
ingredients of the famous shion sauce. The 
process is very complicated and takes 
several years for completion. It looks like 
coffee and, like wine, improves with age. 
Another bean is of immense size, the pods 
measuring upwards of a foot in length; the 
beans are arranged crosswise in the pod. 
They much resemble lima beans but are not 
so rich or tender. A chee.-e is made from 
beans, looking exactly like cakes of home- 
made soap. It is not particularly good, be- 
ing nearly tasteless, hut is, however, very 
nutritious and almost as rich in nitrogen as 
milk cheese. 
Next in popularity, if not in value, is the 
dikon,a large white radish, two feet long and 
four inches in diameter. In the south they 
have a much larger variety, measuring al- 
most a foot in diameter. From this radish, 
ococo, the never failing accompaniment of 
their rice, is made. The dikons are first 
wilted by hanging in the air: afterwards 
they are packed in casks between layers of 
rice bran and salt, and are left to undergo 
a form of fermentation, similar to the mak- 
ing of sour-kraut, %nd which is fully as 
odorous. These radishes are sliced and eat- 
en raw. Many other varieties of ococo are 
made from the dikon; turnips are used for 
the same purpose, as are the tops of many 
varieties of crucifer*. 
The carrots are long, hard and quite des- 
titute of sweetness; the sweet potatoes are 
small, stringy and dry, but very popular. 
Furnaces are built for the sole purpose of 
boiling them, and they are sold to children, 
baked or steamed, as roasted peanuts are at 
home. The onions have no bulbs but look 
like long onion tops: the egg plants are very 
small, being no larger than eggs, and of a 
white variety so nearly resembling an egg 
as to effectually deceive the most experienc- 
ed old bidt^y. 
There are a great variety of yams, differ- 
ing little from each other except in size and 
shape, all being very starchy and very in- 
sipid. The most common tubers used as 
food are the bulbs formed on the caladium, 
or “elephant’s ear,’’ which is used in the 
west as an ornamental foliage plant. The 
tubers are gathered in the fall much as we, 
at home, gather potatoes, and are good eat- 
ing, prepared as the natives cook them ;being 
very glutinous, quite as much so as the 
okra. The bulb of the saggittaria saggitti- 
folia is also used as an article of food. Its 
flavor is that of green corn. They also eat 
the roofs of the lotus, jointed rhizoma, from 
two to three feet long, very glutinous, 
starchy and crisp. 
Udo (aralia cordata) more nearly resem- 
bles asparagus than any other vegegetable 
here and when cooked as we prepare aspar- 
agus, it is quite good, having the flavor of 
green walnuts. A hardy pea planted in the 
fall, yields very early in the spring, young, 
tender pods, which are eaten before they 
reach full size, and are the most delicious 
vegetables they have. The first in the market 
bring twelve cents a pound. The young 
shoots of the bamboo are highly esteemed 
by the people as food. They very much re- 
semble a large, rusty ear of corn with the 
husk on. The inside is solid and ivory white 
in color. They are eaten in various ways 
by the natives, but as they have little flavor 
and that like grass, it seems a waste of la- 
bor to eat them, as they seem utterly indi- 
gestable. 
The root of the burdock is also one of the 
most popular vegetables; resembling and 
tasting somewdiat like salsify. I almost for- 
got to mention the cucumber which, by the 
way, is grown here on bean poles. I arrived 
in Japan in mid-summer and it seemed to 
me that cucumbers must be the national 
dish, for every man, woman and child ap- 
peared to be eating them, unpeeled and as 
picked from the vines. This was all the 
more remarkable as cholera was then raging 
horribly. The Japanese is a true fatalist and 
devours green plums, watermelons and cu- 
cumbers, with the calmness of a child when 
cholera is destroying hundreds of victims 
daily in Tokio alone. 
The melons are abominable; the canta- 
loopes being small, hard and tough; the wat- 
ermelons spongy and dry, both lack flavor 
and sweetness. They have a squash how- 
ever, which is very good indeed. It is brown- 
ish yellow, with a purple bloom, rough and 
ridged, and of wonderful keeping qualities. 
Another, green with beautiful white flesh, 
makes an excellent preserve. 
The leaves of the different trees, shrubs 
and plants that are used for food are simply 
innumerable. They always in winter have 
a sort of soup for breakfust in which the 
leaves of seme variety of crucifer* are 
boiled, usually turnip greens. On the morn- 
ing of the 7th of January they eat a dish 
composed of seven wild herbs, and the gath- 
ing of them is quite a national festivity for 
the women and children. The eating of 
these seven herbs is supposed to insure 
those who partake against all ills for the 
coming year. They are gathered a day or 
two before used, but, on the evening of the 
6tli, they are boiled and chopped a little, the 
next morning mashed to a pulp before the 
cock crows; otherwise they have no virtue. 
As for foreign vegetables I know of none 
that will not grow here, and at almost any 
season. One can buy cucumbers, aspara- 
gus and fresh beans in October, radishes 
and lettuce the year around, and all other 
vegetables in due season. But they all lack 
flavor. The natives do not take to them as 
yet. After they have grown here sufficient- 
ly long to become naturalized they may 
adopt them, but at present they are either 
too patriotic or too superstitious to partake 
of them, except when politeness forces 
them to do so.— Mrs. Georgeson . 
Garden Hints. 
Cabbage and Cauliflower plants, that 
have been wintered over or started early in 
hotbeds, will now be planted out in open 
ground and the empty frames may be utiliz- 
ed by pricking out into them tomato plants, 
etc. Plenty of ventilation is needed and 
on very mild days the sashes should be 
removed entirely. 
Rich soil and transplanting two or three 
times will make tomato plants stocky and 
with heavy fibrous roots. 
Celery seed should be sown early in a 
moist and slightly shaded spot. 
The Host Beautiful Flowers. 
Notwithstanding the introduction of Orchids and 
other rare flowers, new varieties of such old popular 
favorites as Sweet Peas. Pansies, Balsams and Phlox, 
recently developed by skillful hybridizing and selec- 
tion are really entitled to rank among the most beauti- 
ful of all flowers. W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the Phila- 
delphia seedsmen, advertise in this issue a remarkably 
cheap Diamond Collection of fifteen best varieties for 
fifty cents, containing new improved strains of their 
own growing, that will doubtless prove a pleasant sur- 
prise to many of our readers. They have mailed us a 
sample collection, neatly done up, each packet bearing 
an illustration of the variety, with concise directions 
for cultivation.— Adv. 
