Growing Best Quality Vegetables on a Time Table 
By Adolph Kruhm, Ohio 
APPLYING THE PEDIGREED STRAIN IDEA TO THE HOME GARDEN AND WORKING WITH AN EXACT 
UNDERSTANDING OF THE TIME OF YIELD— A GUARANTEED LIST FROM ACTUAL EXPERIENCE 
Little Marvel pea. Certainly a marvel in earliness, pro- 
ductiveness, quality, and appearance 
New Giant Podded pole lima. Note the size of the pods 
and the grains correspond 
I T IS one of my hobbies to look for 
exact results from my vegetable gar- 
den and that means a very close 
study of the varieties that I shall 
plant to suit my purpose. People generally 
are reluctant to consider the term “pedi- 
greed” aside from anything but animals. 
A pedigreed animal is supposed to have 
certain qualities or characteristics inherited 
from its parents. Applied to a garden I 
ask you now to consider the term in the 
light of “what we have a right to expect” 
from any garden on account of what we 
actually know about the parents of that 
garden — the seeds. 
Seeds are factors with very decided 
tendencies and characteristics — but par- 
ticularly tendencies. It is fortunate that 
in the case of nearly all our most important 
vegetables, we can judge the tendencies 
of the race once a year, in a few instances 
twice a year. This helps us in the “sifting 
down” process and consequent progress of 
the best of the race. If careful records are 
kept, it proves comparatively easy to 
separate the chaff from the 
good — to become acquainted 
with the pedigrees of the veg- 
etables which, in turn, will 
enable the gardener to make 
positive statements. 
At the risk of displeasing 
half the people who read tins, 
I offer, in the following table, 
a list of varieties which I con- 
sider the “best blood” in the 
vegetable world to-day. This 
list is not intended to be arbi- 
trary. No doubt there are 
others that are “just as good.” 
But 1 am ready to vouch for the pedigree 
of these sorts, because in experiments ex- 
tending over practically six years, they have 
stood every test. Hot or cold weather, 
wet or dry season, poor or rich land, 
thorough or indifferent cultivation — these 
sorts have always done as their inherited 
qualities gave me a right to expect. 
In two respects, this list is unassailable: 
In quality of product and dependability 
of yield in due time. Quality should, in 
my opinion, be the first requisite in the 
home garden. Extra Early Round Podded 
Red Valentine bean is easily four to five 
days earlier than Bountiful. Under favor- 
Crosby's Egyptian beet, to be sown April 15 
I 
mm 
jS-tiCrrV -’iC-ftfc.' 
Golden Bantam, the sweetest early sweet com growing 
able conditions it matures in 45 to 50 days. 
But — the pods are small, full of fibre, get 
tough quickly and are very stringy. Six 
days later you get Bountiful beans, twice 
as long, entirely stringless, brittle, fleshy — 
a hundred point bean in every respect. 
Isn’t it wiser to wait the six extra days for 
Bountiful than to have your wife “call 
you down” on account of the “million 
strings” on a quart of Valentine pods? 
The second factor — that of dependa- 
bility of yield in due time — deserves far 
more attention on the part of our home 
gardeners than it receives at present. 
Many industrious suburbanites will get 
busy next month and convert a lot of 
“bottled-up” enthusiasm into a backyard 
garden. For a whole month, they will 
dig and rake and sow and hoe. Mother 
earth will respond readily and convert a 
dreary spot into a bountiful garden that 
will bear its choicest products when the 
owner and his family are at the seashore. 
No other single factor that I know tends 
to discourage gardeners as much as when 
they have to see the well- 
deserved fruits of their efforts 
go to waste or in strange pots. 
The solution of this problem 
is found in a little planning. 
Planning is needed to give you 
what you want when you want 
it. For this reason the follow- 
ing table contains dates, not 
figures. If you want Burpee’s 
Kidney Wax beans on July 1st, 
sow the seeds on May 9th. 
All the vegetables on this list 
are far more dependable than 
some human beings. They 
are always on time. The dates given are 
the results of years of observation and I 
On the left. Burpee’s Kidney Wax; on the right 
Bountiful bean 
