4889 
THE RURAL HEW-YORKER. 
529 
&\)t (fvatrfon. 
THE VEGETABLE GARDEN. 
WILLIAM FALCONER. 
Celery. —I sowed our main crop out-of- 
doors on April 25th. Just as the seed was 
bursting its shell in May, we had moist 
weather, then a parching hot spell, and not a 
plant came up, every seed was wasted in the 
ground; sol had to resow, which I did on 
May 24th. This may seem very late to many 
growers, but it isn’t, for I now have splendid 
plants, six inches high, and all transplanted 
into seed-beds. They are in time enough, for 
we have very little ground ready for them 
yet. We plant them after peas, early pota¬ 
toes, onions or strawberries. The great thing 
with celery is to keep the plant in vigorous 
growth from the moment the seedlings appear 
till you store away the plants for winter. 
Don’t let them get spindled by overcrowd¬ 
ing, checked by drought, or stunted by star¬ 
vation. Early celery has been set out in 
trenches three feet apart. This closeness is 
because we must blanch it with boards ratber 
than with earth, to prevent rusting. Our 
early main crop was planted in rows 4% feet 
apart, and our late main crops three feet for 
single, and four feet for double rows. For 
celery we manure abundantly and broadcast 
in fall; crop with peas or something else in 
spring, then in July or early August throw 
out our rows for the celery; the rows are six 
inches deep and into them a heavy dressing of 
fine manure is worked. The level system is 
not so good for us as is the trench plan. By 
planting in shallow trenches we use the ridge 
for spinach, lettuce or other catch crops, as 
well as for waiting when watering the celery 
in dry weather. 
Snap Beans. —I sow these wherever a va¬ 
cancy occurs, and I am not particular about 
giving them regular rotation ground. They 
will grow in land too sour for peas or cauli¬ 
flowers and too shady for root crops ; and I 
will sow them every week till September. 
The last sowings will be of the White Flage¬ 
olet, which although a poor bean, is dwarf, 
free-cropping and very early, and I can cover 
it easily with frames and sashes. The best of all 
green-podded snap beans is the Valentine, and 
of pole beans, Dreer’s Lima. The Valentines 
we are now using were sown May 28th. Our 
earliest Valentiues were sown April 11th, At 
that time I put in a large sowing, part for 
use and part for seed. The seed is now ripe, 
the vines gathered and spread out to dry, and 
the ground forked over and planted with 
Savoys. The seed now saved is what I shall 
use for August sowings. 
Lima Beans were sowed early (May 6) 
because the season was earlv. We have a 
piece of fllled-in land which is rich, level and 
moderately moist, but for some unhnown 
reason every crop—melons, celery, cauliflower, 
etc.—except beans, I ever tried in it, failed; 
but beans grow superbly in it, and I use it 
year after year for Limas, aud every suc¬ 
ceeding year they seem to wax stronger ; but 
there is no stint of manure. Note a curious 
point in sowing ; one man sowed the seed by 
pushing it into the ground, eye down, and 
every seed grew ; another sowed by laying 
the seed flat aud covering one lot loosely, and 
the other lot by tamping the soil firmly on 
top of the beans. The firmly-tamped ones 
grew as well as the eye-down ones ; whereas 
the loosely covered ones nearly all rotted. I 
have tried all the recorded devices for train¬ 
ing Limas, also shortening in the vines at 
various times, and now unhesitatingly assert 
that the common method of using poles and 
letting the vines climb up them at will is, in 
my opinion, the best and least troublesome, 
and no amount of pinching ever gained one 
day in earliuess. 
The Dwarf Limas.— Now let me “speak 
out in meeting.” I do not know, never did 
know, and caunot perceive what advantage 
we have in dwarfing the Lima. The dwarf 
yields no better fruit; its cropping capacity 
is vastly curtailed; in earliness I find it has no 
advantage over the vine, aud its convenience 
as a garden crop is open to question. I cer¬ 
tainly regard the vine as the most convenient. 
Among the poles we can walk around every 
hill iu picking the beans; after the end of 
June the pole beans have got beyond the 
power of the weeds and will choke the weeds 
to death; but the dwarfs are at the mercy of 
the weeds so long as the beaus live. Of course, 
we shouldn’t have weeds iu the garden, that’s 
very true; but we don’t always practice what 
we ought. The poles are easily placed, easily 
kept and last for years—that bugaboo won’t 
scare practical people. 
Henderson’s Dwarf Lima is a dwarf Sie¬ 
va. In time of flowering aud podding it is ex¬ 
actly the same as the common Sieva, and 
about 10 days ahead of the large Lima. Our 
plants sown May 17, are 15 to 18 inches high, 
very bushy and full of flower spikes; in sev¬ 
eral cases there are over 20 pods to a spike. 
It displays no inclination whatever to run, 
but is in reality a fixed dwarf. The chief 
use I have always had for Sieva Beans was to 
fill the gap between peas and large Limas; 
that is, to come in from the 20th to the 25th 
of July till the 1st or 7th of August. So long 
as I have plenty of peas no one wants Sievas, 
and as soon as large Limas come in the de¬ 
mand for Sievas ceases. 
Kumerle’s Dwarf Lima, from Thor- 
burn. —In this we have a veritable dwarf 
form of the large Lima, dwarfer, if anything, 
than the dwarf Sieva, perfectly fixed in habit 
and with no inclination whatever to run. I** 
is very free-flowering. Ours were sown May 
17, and are now full of blossoms, but very 
few pods are set yet. It is so much of a 
stranger to me that I know nothing further 
about it, but I do wonder why so decided a 
novelty was not more prominently advertised. 
Peas—Late Planting.— On June 3, I 
sowed Advancer, Abundance, Blue Beauty, 
Stratagem, Yorkshire Hero, and Midsummer 
iD rows three feet apart. Blue Beauty gave 
us our first picking on July 12, and is very 
prolific. Advancer came on the 15, and, al¬ 
though doing well, is not nearly so full as was 
the Beauty. The others are not ready yet 
(July 19). Between these rows on July 13, I 
sowed Squantum Corn. It is now an inch 
above the ground. The peas don’t shade it, 
and they will be off before it hurts them. On 
April 10,1 sowed 21 kinds of peas for trial. 
In due time we picked from these for use and 
let the rest ripen up for seed. About a week 
ago I cleared them all off, and am now pre¬ 
paring the ground for .celery. I always try 
to keep up a succession of peas till Lima 
Beans come in about the first of August, but 
it hardly pays, for after the 20th of July, mil¬ 
dew generally ravages the crop and they are 
of poor quality. I had good success with 
peas in the melon ground. I marked off the 
ground in rows seven feet apart and sowed 
the melons and between every second and 
third row of melons sowed a row of peas. 
These peas have yielded their crop and aro 
now ready to t>e cleared off. The place where 
they ran will be occupied as pathways in the 
melon beds. This has been a good year for 
peas. Alpha, Champion of England ana 
Yorkshire Hero are unexcelled for quality. 
Most of the new-comers are failures in this 
respect. 
The Turnips we are now using were sown 
May 28 and are Purple-top White Globe. We 
sow a little every two weeks till the end of 
August, for succession. All sowings made 
before August get very wormy in our light, 
heavily-manured land. 
The Cucumbers we are now using were 
sown May 25. They are the market garden¬ 
ers’ strain of White Spine, given me by Silas 
Albertson of Roslyn, and extra fine. We sow 
a little every fortnight. Old plants don’t last 
long. For pickling, dig out every second 
row of early potatoes and in their place sow 
cucumbers. A nice sowing of cucumbers 
may be put in in August, but somewhere 
where a frame may be put over them in the 
fall to prolong their fruiting season, and one 
must be ready with lots of tobacco stems to 
put about them, as late cucumbers are much 
subject to lice pests. 
Onions have done well. Large Red Weth¬ 
ersfield, Yellow Danvers and Southport White 
Globe are our main crop. Mammoth Pompeii 
promises well: it is a large oval onion; but 
for general purposes I find nothing better 
than the three first mentioned. For a few 
years back our onions have been much troubled 
with the onion-maggot at the roots in May, 
so this year I changed the patch to across the 
road—only about 20 feet away—and not a 
maggot was found; but with July came leaf- 
thrips, and from this peso we have no immu¬ 
nity, It never completely ruins a crop, as it 
does not appear till July, by which time the 
onions are half grown; but it sadly affects 
the longevity and large size of the crop. 
About the first of August our onions will be 
ripe and pulled and the ground will be ready 
for strawberries or celery. 
Onions from Sets were gathered three 
weeks ago. They swell up aud ripen quickly. 
The chief point about them for family use is 
that they come in early aud can be grown well 
enough in light sandy land, whereas seed 
onions should always have good ground. 
But “ set ” onions are poorer keepers than 
are “seed ” onions, so a few of them are suf¬ 
ficient for a family. 
Potato Onions have behaved badly, and 
they have done this for the past three years. 
They fail to start aud keep up vigorously; 
they “ melt off" as it were. So far as flavor 
goes they are poor onions, but when they do 
well, they are a very certain crop, and the 
onions are large, of fine appearance, and are 
capital keepers. We harvested ours 10 days 
ago. 
Shallots 1 gathered a week ago, aDd they 
now are spread out to cure. Never were they 
finer. This is on account of so much rain. 
They are used whole, and are much sought for 
by French cooks. They keep well during win¬ 
ter, and are good stock to have, as they don’t 
trouble us with sprouting with every warm 
turn of the weather. They multiply greatly. 
Garlic is not quite ripe yet; we let it stay 
in the ground till the necks bend over, then 
lift and cure, and hang up in bunches. It is 
very hardy. It is a good deal asked for by 
French cooks for flavoring, and really for or¬ 
dinary domestic purposes I think we can 
get along very well without it. It is the 
“ loudest ” of all the onion race. 
Chives are a nice thing to have. They are 
hardy, reproductive and neat, and so useful 
for soups and salads. The tops only are 
used. Cut over a few plants every now and 
again to have them come up fresh and green. 
Leeks we sowed on April 4, and left 
them in the seed rows till a week ago, when 
we lifted them, cut them hard back, tops and 
roots, and planted them out in rows 18 inches 
apart and six inches asunder in the row. A 
few of them are enough for a family. They 
are nice tor soups, but if one has onions, leeks 
are seldom asked for. They are a very ac¬ 
commodating crop. No matter bow early 
they are sown, they will not “ bolt ” to flower 
that year, and you can keep them in the seed 
row till you have convenient ground or 
time for planting them out. What is known 
as the Large American Flag is a very satis¬ 
factory kind. Get fresh seed every year, for 
old seed ir. worthless. 
Queens County, Long Island. 
PERFECT-LEAVED STRAWBERRIES. 
PROF. J. L. BUDD. 
The Downer Prolific Strawberry ; varieties 
for Iowa; influence of “ breed ” in straw¬ 
berries; offspring of Chili crosses with in¬ 
digenous Western species best for dry in¬ 
terior regions; superiority of American 
strawberries throughout the North Temper¬ 
ate zone ; vitality ana perfect foliage to be 
henceforth the paramount objects in 
strawberry “breeding 
A “Brevity” in the Rural states that I 
“deem Downer’s Prolific the best strawberry 
for home use.” I have said that on our 
grounds the Downer was the best variety to 
use as a fertilizer for the Crescent for home 
use, and that it would prove the best fertiliz¬ 
er for market if the Downer were better in 
color. But this remark will not apply to all 
parts of the country, or even to all parts of 
Iowa. On our rich, black drift soil nearly 
all the popular varieties of the States east of 
the lakes fail wholly or partially ou account 
of sunburn or rust of foliage, yet we have 
several excellent sorts that prove defiant to 
wind and weather. Notable among these are 
four varieties originated by J. S. Downer, of 
Kentucky, viz: Downer’s Prolific, Green’s 
Prolific, Charles Downing and Kentucky. The 
Crescent, Great Pacific, Bubach and a few 
others have this perfect foliage, while scores 
of varieties that do well on other soils and in 
other parts of our great domain fail to stand 
our extremes of summer. 
“IT IS IN THE BREED.” 
In speakiug of the reasons why some of his 
varieties were perfect In foliage, Mr. Downer 
said, several years prior to his death: “It is 
in the breed.” Sir Henry Vilmorin has made 
about the same remark in regard to the 
strawberries that maintain perfect foliage on 
the interior steppes of Russia. 
As the history of our best strawberries has 
not recently been discussed, it may be useful 
to indicate briefly what Downer and Vilmorin 
meant by “the breed” of perfect-folihged 
sorts. They believed—as does the writer— 
that the best strawberries for the dry interior 
climates of both continents have come from 
crosses of the Chili species with the indigenous 
species of the West known as Fragaria Illi- 
noiensis or F. Iowensis. On the other hand, 
many of the choice varieties which fail with 
us are derived .from crosses of the Chili spe¬ 
cies with that of Virginia (F. Virginiana). 
Whilo such general statements are difficult to 
prove in a direct wayjfrom the recorded state¬ 
ments of books aud periodicals, the history of 
such advances as Keen’s seedling, Hovey’s 
seedling. Downer’s seedlings, and Vilmorin's 
seedlings, confirms the belief in an indirect 
way. 
Our people seem to have forgotten that the 
best strawberries of the North Temperate zone 
to-day, are purely American. So far as I know, 
the indigenous species of Europe and Asia 
have not given a single variety now consid¬ 
ered valuable for general culture in any 
country. At a very early day the American 
species from North and South America were 
introduced into Europe and Asia, and their 
crosses are now found at the extreme east 
limits of Europe, and I have been assured 
that they are grown in Persia, Central Asia, 
and China. 
As we have probably about reached the 
limit of development as to size and quality, 
and the value of new varieties largely hinges 
on the vitality and foliage of the plant, it is 
about time that another Downer should go 
back to first principles. The best varieties of 
the Chili Strawberry are now obtainable, and 
Iowa and Illinois have perfect-foliaged native 
sorts with fair size, and the- unapproachable 
flavor , which the big South Americans lack. 
We should have system and method in plant 
as well as in animal breeding. 
Ames, Iowa. 
51)cq> ijuslnimmj. 
SHEEP AT THE ROYAL SHOW. 
HENRY STEWART. 
“ Golden-hoof ” a prime favorite in Eng¬ 
land; numerous breeds at the show; the 
most useful, the most popular; heavy long- 
wools losing favor; the Shropshire ahead; 
Down, Leicester, Lincoln and Cotswold, 
Romney Marsh, Dorset Horned, Welsh 
Mountain, Cheviot, Roscommon and other 
less notable breeds. 
The report of the grand exhibition of the 
Royal Agricultural Society of England is full 
of interest and instruction to American 
farmers, but to me the sheep show is partic¬ 
ularly interesting, not only in a personal way, 
but as affording an exemplary lesson to 
American farmers of what might be done in 
this country, were equally deserved attention 
given to this most profitable of all farm stock. 
Considering the narrow boundaries of the 
little island, having only little more acreage 
than the State of New York, the large variety 
of sheep kept is truly amazing, and shows 
how much the sheep quickly becomes ac¬ 
climated to its conditions and bow even smal 
differences in climate, soil, and conditions of 
agriculture affect in a most important manner 
this kind of farm stock. At this show the 
following breeds were exhibited all in re¬ 
spectable numbers, and of course in the finest 
condition: Leicesters, Border Leicesters, 
Cotswolds, Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Sbrop- 
shires, South Downs, Hampshire Downs, 
Suffolks, Dorset Horned, Romney Marsh, 
Devon Longwools, Ryelands, Dartmoors, Ex¬ 
moors, Wensleydales, Roscommon (Irish), 
Limestones, Cheviots, Black-faced Scotch, 
Lonks, Welsh Mountain, South Hams, St. 
Kildas (one of the Scotch island breeds), 
Merino, Dorset Downs and Portland. Among 
the foreign breeds were Zulus, and the 
African long-tailed sheep. 
Every one of these breeds has some special 
interest. As showing the tendency of Eng¬ 
lish sheep culture to the more commonly use¬ 
ful kinds and to the neglect of the special 
breeds noted tor some singular points of 
value, the numbers of the entries are signifi¬ 
cant. Thus the Shropshires made 212 entries; 
the South Downs 123; Oxford Downs 82; 
Hampshire Downs 31. All of these are of the 
Down class, of which the Shropshires have 
gone far ahead even of the old favorite South 
Down, ana well it merits the favor into which 
it has sprung as the best mutton and domestic 
wool sheep of all the breeds. The longwools 
which were a few 3 ’ears ago in the ascendant, 
have gone back, the great, fat carcasses hav¬ 
ing gone out of fashion and having been found 
unprofitable in the present period of cheap 
products, in competition with the meat-mak¬ 
ing and clothing-wool-producingDo wn breeds. 
Several years ago, after a patient trial with 
the Leicesters aud Cotswolds. I gave them up 
as unprofitable sheep and have since constant- 
13 ' advised farmers—these are farmers' sheep 
and not shepherds’—to let these heavy-bodied, 
much-eating, long-wooled sheep alone, and 
the English farmers have at last found it out 
in spite of their strong conservatism. Only 
seven of the big Lincoln sheep and 11 Leices¬ 
ters were on exhibition at the Royal Show; 
and the formerly extremely popular Cots¬ 
wolds showed only 60 entries, which was less 
than twice as mauy as the Romney Marsh 
breed which had 36 entries. 
This Romney Marsh sheep is kept on the 
salt meadows of the southeast coast of Eng¬ 
land aud is the only existing sheep which can 
