906 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Garden Notes From New England 
PART I. 
Backyard Crops. —Not a few people 
who live in suburban towns and in 
smaller villages near the cities have be¬ 
gun to take advantage of an excellent 
opportunity to make a little extra 
money. The city markets offer an in¬ 
creasing sale for fruits of high quality, 
and especially such fruit as cannot be 
readily shipped a long distance. More¬ 
over, many city motorists are making a 
practice of traveling over nearby roads 
to look for fresh garden produce. I have 
a neighbor who works in Boston, but 
who every year sells a considerable 
amount of fruit from his backyard plot. 
Bast year he sold $40 worth of Beurre 
Bose pears alone, simply expressing them 
into Boston in bushel boxes. He has 
found such a demand for pears of this 
variety that most of his trees have been 
grafted to Beurre Bose. The same gar¬ 
den also supplies a number of people with 
Columbian raspberries, which are not 
Setting Plants with Homemade Dibble. 
Fig. 252. 
easily obtained in the market, but which 
housekeepers like for canning. 
Asparagus as a Side Line. —A wom¬ 
an of my acquaintance each year markets 
a considerable amount of asparagus, and 
this, by the way, is an excellent money 
making crop for anyone who wants a side 
line. Usually it can be sold readily in 
any small town or suburban section 
where asparagus is likely to be less easily 
obtained than in city markets. Once es¬ 
tablished, an asparagus garden is very 
easy to maintain, provided it is kept 
well fertilized, and can be depended upon \ 
for an annual crop over a long period. 
It is a traditional custom to stop cutting 
asparagus late in June, but a well-known 
grower in Southern New Hampshire. 
John A. Emery by name, has found it 
quite possible to continue the cutting 
until the first of September. He lives 
near enough to the seashore so that cot¬ 
tagers make good customers, and he finds 
a steady demand through July and Au¬ 
gust for asparagus. According to Mr. 
Stalk of Washington Asparagus. Fig. 253 
Emery the bed does not run out as rapidly 
as might be expected, even with this hard 
cutting. When I last visited him he had 
just marketed a crop from a bed five years 
old. and the stalks were larger than ever 
before. Naturally the plants have to 'be 
fed heavily, and fertility is maintained by 
using poultry manure, nitrate of soda and 
salt, the manure being spread between the 
rows at different times during the Sum¬ 
mer, and then covered by a machine 
which turns it under the soil. The nitrate 
of soda is used whenever the crop seems 
to need stimulating. Mr. Emery is a 
thorough believer in salt on his asparagus 
bod. Most people with a small asparagus 
plot can allow their hens to run in it. 
This is an excellent plan, not only sup¬ 
plying fertility, but also eliminating the 
asparagus beetle. Amateurs can be ex¬ 
cused if they crop their asparagus longer 
than usual this year, because there prom¬ 
ises to be a decided scarcity of green peas, 
which usually supplant asparagus in July. 
With seed peas selling at 65e a pint, it is 
not surprising that garden makers are 
planting less freely than usual. 
Peas and Dandelions.— While only 
the taller peas are commonly staked. I 
find it a good plan to use a little brush 
even in the dwarfer varieties, even though 
it be simply laid along the ground, in¬ 
stead of being pushed into the soil. This 
support lets air circulate among the vines, 
reducing mildew as well as making it 
easier to harvest the crop. In small gar¬ 
dens brush is often hard to get, and net¬ 
ting is never really satisfactory. This 
fact militates against the use of the heavy 
bearing, large-podded, late varieties like 
Telephone and Champion of England. 
There is one variety, however, called Pot- 
lach, which, while late and prolific, never 
grows very tall. Apparently garden mak¬ 
ers are just beginning to realize that they 
can grow their own dandelions. There is 
a big demand for dandelions in New Eng¬ 
land. and a number of market gardeners 
are finding it a valuable crop, some of 
them planting several acres of these 
greens. The directions usually call for 
early planting, but the market growers 
often wait until July. Probably the small 
gardener will do better to sow his seed in 
June. However, dandelions do well on a 
piece of ground from which peas have just 
been removed. The combination seems to 
be a good one, for commercial growers not 
infrequently follow dandelions with peas 
after the former have been marketed in 
the Spring. Of course the later the seed 
is planted the more difficult (lie task of 
making it germinate. At best it is rather 
slow to sprout. It is a good plan to roll 
the soil over the seed, or to firm it with a 
board, and likewise to put in a few radish 
seeds to mark the rows. These rows can 
be a foot apart, and after the dandelions 
have been cultivated two or three weeks 
they will mat the ground to such an ex¬ 
tent that no more attention is required. 
Sometimes, although not always, a light 
covering of straw or marsh hay is given 
in the Fall, and the dandelions are har¬ 
vested very early in the Spring. The crop 
is really a paying one for the commercial 
grower, and worth the attention of the 
amateur who likes greens for his own 
table. 
Egg Plants in New England. —It is 
supposed in some quarters that egg plants 
cannot be grown satisfactorily in New 
England. This is a mistake. There are 
market gardeners who give several acres 
to eggplants each season, and they can be 
handled without any difficulty in the small 
garden plot, provided started plants are 
purchased. It is true that extra rich soil 
is needed, but it is not difficult to meet 
this requirement when only a few plants 
are grown. Starting the plants from seed 
is another question, and that is a job for 
experts, for a seed bed with a temperature 
of from TO to SO degrees is required. The 
best grower with whom I am acquainted 
starts his egg plants about the middle of 
March and transplants twice under glass 
before he hardens them off. They are 
set 3 ft. apart in the row and nitrate of 
soda applied two or three times during 
the season. There is one essential point 
to remember when growing eggplants, 
which is that they must have entirely 
new ground every season. It has been 
proven by experience that aggplants set 
out on ground which has been given over 
to this crop fully seven years previous 
have developed diseased conditions, great- 
May S, 19'JO 
ly reducing the yield, while those on 
fresh ground, only a few feet away, have 
escaped. Tests are now being made at 
the market growers’ experiment station 
in Lexington in an effort to learn more 
about this peculiar condition. 
E. I. FARRINGTON. 
- Lime and Potatoes 
What do you think of using lime on 
potato ground? I think you told me 
once that lime and wood ashes did not 
go well together. How would they work 
on corn ground? I have some wood 
ashes also lime. Would you sow the 
lime on potato ground or put it in the 
hill? I think it was two years ago that 
I planted potatoes on this same piece and 
there were a lot of white grubs which 
ate the potatoes. Is there any use for 
wood ashes? J. F. w. 
Connecticut. 
We have not advised against mixing 
lime and wood ashes though there would 
be nothing gained by doing it. The wood 
ashes, also lime. Would you sow the 
Our advice is not to mix wood ashes and 
hen manure. The reason why we ad¬ 
vise against using lime and wood ashes 
on potato ground is that the lime is likely 
to increase the scab disease. The ashes 
will not kill the white grubs. We would 
not mix the ashes and lime but would 
broadcast the lime in the corn ground 
and harrow it in and then scatter the 
ashes in the hills. 
“On. Jones.” said the botanist. “I see 
a pair of overalls working in the field. 1 
wonder if it’s a man or a woman?” “You 
say it’s working? Then it’s a woman.”— 
New York Globe. 
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