little and laid frames over them. In this way 
I can pick good, ripe tomatoes from these 
vines till well into November. Of course, in 
he case of frosty weather I cover over t.hn 
sashes with mats or some other extra cover¬ 
ing and bank around the frames with dirt to 
keep out the frost. 
Jerusalem ARTICHOKES don’t make swol¬ 
len tubers till August: indeed, in September 
they are almost too small and watery for use. 
We get fair tubers in October. It is because 
they ttra so unripe that they keep so poorly 
over winter. If you must lil t them over win¬ 
ter, store them in small bulk mixed with sand 
or earth, in a very cool place. After lifting 
and before you store them lay them in small 
heaps on' the field and cover them lightly wit h 
tops or other handy material, and let them re¬ 
main in these heaps for a week or so till they 
“sweat, ’ before you store them permanently 
in the cellar or shed. 
Scorzoxera on light sandy land with us, 
isn’t worth harvesting; but in rich, deep, loamy 
jand it hus done splendidly. The same is the 
case with salsify. Seoramera has a greater 
tendency than has salsify to flower the first 
year. Flowering toughens the roots. 
Asparagus. —1 have cut it over and burned 
the tops. As soon ns the tops were off the 
ground i manured it and turned the manure 
under lightly. I use well rotted hog pen man¬ 
ure for the asparagus, i never have known 
it to injure asparagus, corn, Lima or suap 
beans, but In the case of the cabbage family 
I have blamed it as a favorite place for rear¬ 
ing maggots. 
My Winter Berts were sown Aug. .'id, and 
are now nice using stock. We don’t want 
large beets of any sort for our own table; we 
like those that are ubout two or three inches 
in diameter, young and tender. We have 
drawn a little earth, with the hoe, up over 
the “roots,” as a guard against a sharp nip of 
frost, for wo expect to be able to leave our 
beets out in the ground till the middle of No¬ 
vember. 
Onions.— Over a month ago 1 planted out 
my sets in the open ground in rows a foot 
apart. They are now grown some six inches 
high. It is better to plant them out in the fall 
than to be bothered keeping and tending them 
iudoors iu wiuter, aud it is so much work 
done. Look over your summer onions, rub 
off all sprouts uud remove all decaying bulbs. 
A good, sharp frost won’t hurt onions, pro¬ 
viding they ure not allowed to thaw out 
hastily, or if the}' are moved while frozen. 
About the middle of November I remove my 
onions to u close shed, where l place a thick 
layer of dry hay under them and a like cover¬ 
ing over them. They are stored iu bulk some 
nine to 10 inches deep, aud the dry-hay cover¬ 
ing completely excludes frost. If well sea¬ 
sonal and perfectly free from decaying bulbs 
they will here keep nicely till March, when 
the covering should be reduced and the bulbs 
be examined to remove sprouts aud decaying 
bulbs. While freezing does them no good, 
we should guard against overheating them in 
winter. A temperature of 311° to 35 w will suit 
them admirably. 
Parsley —Dou’t fail to have a few plants 
g'owing In a box or keg iu the cellar or else¬ 
where over winter. 
Herbs.—S ee that you have some mint, 
thyme and sago cut and dried for flavoring 
during the winter season. And where there 
are young babies in the house, gather aud dry 
a bunch of catnip. 
Spinach in frames in open quarters is 
much benefited by stirring the soil between 
the rows, l’he blisters you now may see upon 
the leaves are caused by maggots. If this 
disease Is very bad, avoid sowing spinach in 
that bit of ground again. 
Lima Beans grow well year after year in 
the same ground. Save all the ripe beans you 
can for winter use. Many people prefer to 
save the Limas before they are fully ripe, for 
winter use; they claim they ure more tender. 
liutal Copies. 
WINTERING- VEGETABLES IN THE 
“ COLD NORTH.” 
Here, owing to our cold, snowy, unthawing 
winters, uuy vegetable will keep perfectly in a 
not very deop pit, made in the lee of a fence 
or building where a snow-drift will form. 
Under these drifts the ground hardly freezes 
at all, and yet it is so cold and the tempera- 
turo so uniform that there is neither growth 
nor decay. It is, in fact, a perfect, natural 
'cold storage," not practicable under other 
conditions of climate. But such stores are 
inaccessible until spring. They are excellent 
for the keeping of seed and seed stock, but 
worthless as a resource for wiuter supply. 
For this I think highly of the Canadian 
method. It is a cellar unconnected with the 
dwelling, but covered with a tight shed. It is 
made exactly like a cellar, but without “un¬ 
derpinning,” i. *>., the wall is brought only to 
the surface, and the floor, which is made 
double by ceiling the under side of t he floor 
joists with matched boards, is packed 
thoroughly with dry moss, sawdust, or other 
non-conducting material, and double floored, 
the Upper flooring being matched, with thick 
paper between. This cellar is entered from 
above, through a stairway, inclosed with 
double doors, so as to form a sort of “air¬ 
lock,” and mild days during the winter are 
availed of to remove any of the contents 
wanted for use. In this region wo have noth¬ 
ing which could bo called a winter thaw. 
Many winters pass without any thaw at all 
from December to March; and I have never 
known one to carry fill’ the snow, or ipse more 
than one or two days. 
I have not such a cellar as described above, 
but besides the ('rosi-proof cellar under my 
house, I have an outer one, in which the tem¬ 
perature, after winter fairly sets in, is always 
below freezing, but never below zero. Here 
I can keep cabbages anil onions perfectly, tin* 
piles or bins being covered with straw to 
obviate the effects of minor variations of tem¬ 
perature, Both cabbages and onions keep 
here perfectly, every one coming out in mer¬ 
chantable condition in spring. What little 
celery is grown here is packed closely in 
boxes with sand, and kept as cool and dark as 
jiossible. T. H. h, 
Orleans Co., Vt. 
%xc\)iUdnxt, 
A NEAT COTTAGE. 
The plan of the neat six-room cottage shown 
farm (Topics. 
LESSONS OF THE DROUGHT. 
Valuable lessons taught to the wideawake', 
extraordinary severity and sad effects of 
the drought ; ■precautionsagainst it always 
wise: flat, well-drained, rich lands best, in 
drought \ sod land better than cultivated ; 
manure in fall and early spring-, fall 
plowing generally best: great advantages 
Of a fine seed-bed; deep plowing; work the 
soil when moist; frequent shallow cultiva¬ 
tion, weeds-or no weals: mulching good , 
cultiration better: where practicable more 
winterand fencer spring grain crops ; early 
sowing and early varieties best ; thick seat¬ 
ing for fodder, thin for crops; most suita¬ 
ble crops ; plenty of fodder crops essential; 
surplus live stock to be disposed of; provi¬ 
sions to be made for abundance of stock 
water; all feeding stuffs to be saved and 
economized: pastures to be enriched and 
not grazed, low; regular routine can't be 
changed for a single season; permeable 
subsoil, low-branching trees and drought- 
resisting foliage for orchards; sad; irri¬ 
gation of field crops impracticable ; more 
thoughtful study , less idle gossiping. 
FROM WALDO T. BROWN. 
I began keeping a record of the weather in 
lSo?, which, with a few unimportant omis¬ 
sions, has been continued until now, and in 
tins part of Ohio I have no record of a 
drought so long-continued and severe as that 
of this season. Our dry weather set in the 
tenth of June, and from that date till Septem¬ 
ber 27 (110 days) we did not have a single 
soaking shower, and I estimate that less than 
A NEAT COTTAGE. Fig. 458. 
at Figs. 458-461 are re-engraved from the Man¬ 
ufacturer and Builder. According to the esti¬ 
mate of the architect, the cost is only $997. The 
M. and B. thinks the design can be carried out 
for that sum, making the ceilings tR* and 8 
feet high. It would be better to spend $1,200 
upon it, however, and make a much better 
job. It is poor economy to allow a hundred dol¬ 
lars or so to stand in the way of comfort or 
convenience. The plans give every dimension. 
two inches of water fell during the entire 
period, and iu no case was there a shower that 
wet the land so that sod could be plowed. 
Coupled with this, wo hod a temperature 
ranging from 90 w to 104° in the shade, with 
strong winds both day and night a good part 
of the time,aud for weeks at a time not a par¬ 
ticle of dew formed at night aud the drying 
process continued during the entire 24 hours. 
From the tirst of July until September, I 
found it impossible to get a stand of beans, 
cucumbers or any of the more delicate vege¬ 
tables, and although corn planted the middle 
of June came up, it did not make an ear but 
tasseled when one foot high and stopped grow¬ 
ing. Notwithstanding the drought, early 
potatoes made a fair crop, oats, wheat and 
hay were not materially damaged, and even 
corn which made its growth entirely during 
the hot, dry weather, will be nearly a half 
crop. 
There are some lessons which should be 
learned from such seasons. The most impor¬ 
tant of these perhaps is the value of a fine seed- 
bed. Fields which were allowed to dry out 
rough and cloddy, not ouly parted with their 
moisture more readily, but when a light rain 
fell were much less benefited by it. This has 
been particularly noticeable this fall. Many 
fields were plowed for wheat during the dry 
weather, aud while they turned lip rough and 
cloddy, the clods were at first not too hard 
to be crushed by a roller or heavy plauk drag, 
aud the farmer who kept one of these imple¬ 
ments in the field and used it each half day, 
could mellow aud compact his soil so as to 
check evaporation, and the light rains of Sep¬ 
tember moistened this mellow soil so as to 
insure the germination of wheat, while the 
rough, cloddy fields were not appreciably 
affected by them. The same was true of the 
corn land, and that planted in other spring 
crops, and there are many farmers who un¬ 
derstand better than ever before that a fine 
surface* acte as a mulch to conserve moisture. 
Another thing I have observed during this 
dry weather is, that a little crowding of crops 
greatly intensifies the damage from drought. 
There is uot a corn-field in rny neighborhood 
which would not have yielded more with two 
stalks to a hill than with four, and drilled 
corn has eared <iuch better than that in hills. 
The farmer who neglected to thin his corn 
but left four or five stalks to a bill has many 
barren stalks aud few large ears this year. 
Another lesson for the farmer is that he 
should avoid overstocking pastures, aud al¬ 
ways grow a plot of fodder-corn as a reserve 
to be fed if needed, and which will make good 
-Sprung jpltipr pTnn » 
Fig. 400. 
fodder if the season is such that it is not need¬ 
ed for the cows. I have not failed to do this 
for mauy years, and in dry seasons like the 
present, I have had the satisfaction of keeping 
my cows np to a full flow of milk,and of being 
well supplied with dairy products when many 
of my neighbors who do not take this pre¬ 
caution, are either doing without butter, or 
buying it at high prices. 
Perhaps the most important lesson of the 
season is, that provision should be made for 
an abundant supply of pure stock water in the 
firut fltHT r plan 
• Fig. 401 
driest season. The labor expended this sum¬ 
mer iu drawing water for stock and driving 
them long distauces for it, would, if wisely 
directed, on most farms insure a supply duriug 
the longest drought, but iu addition to labor 
lost, there has been u large loss of flesh where 
cattle were driven once a day through the 
heat aud dust to slake their thirst at some 
muddy stream or pond. It has been notice¬ 
able this summer that, notwithstanding the 
drought and short grass, cattle with shade 
and an abuudaut supply of pure water havo 
done remarkably well, aud are now fit for the 
