The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
1289' 
Price of Strawberries. —There never 
was a time, I think, when berries brought 
such prices as have been the case this 
year. Fifty cents a box has been paid 
without a murmur by hundreds of motor¬ 
ists in and around Marshfield, where the 
celebrated Marshall berries grow. In 
Abingdon and Whitman 35 cents a box 
has been obtained at the door, even on 
back roads. Louis Graton, of Whitman, 
has sold a good many of the new St. 
Martin berries, first quality at 50 cents, 
with 35 cents for seconds. Probably the 
majority of other growers in this section 
are handling the Abingdon berry, which 
is making a good name for itself in New 
England, and is much more reliable on 
different soils than is the Marshall, a 
berry which stubbornly refuses to give a 
satisfactory yield in some quarters. It is 
interesting to find different berries being 
featured in different localities. Around 
Concord, for example, the Minute Man is 
popular, while down on the Cape Echo is 
found a very prolific berry by the Portu- 
Paclcing Strawberries in Massachusetts 
Fig. 401 
guese growers, who are making a good 
success of berry culture and shipping car¬ 
loads to Boston each season. 
> Satisfactory Raspberries. —Raspber¬ 
ries which are coming in promise to bring 
good prices, too. As usual, St. Regis was 
the first berry to fruit in my garden, 
coming almost two weeks ahead of any 
other, kind. The berries are not large, 
and it takes a lot of picking to get 
quart, but their flavor is good. Their 
early hearing is a factor in their favor, 
and it is very pleasant to have raspberries 
in the Fall, when .small fruits are mostly 
out of the market. .Garden makers who 
start with this variety should bear one 
point in mind. It gives its best returns 
only when grown by hill culture and the 
canes not allowed to multiply too rapidly. 
Cuthbert, the old standby in New Eng¬ 
land, was the next variety to fruit, and 
about a week later came Latham, which 
Used to be the Minnesota No. 4. I am 
more and more impressed with the value 
of this berry for New England. The 
fruit is large and borne generously, and 
has an excellent flavor. The plants seem 
ironclad, and are not difficult to handle. 
The new Ontario came along still latex*, 
hut possibly would have fruited earlier if 
the plants had been more firmly estab¬ 
lished. This berry, which has been put 
out in a limited way by the State Experi¬ 
ment Station at Geneva, N. Y., is making 
splendid growth for me, and promises to 
be a good sort for New England. Colum¬ 
bian is always late in fruiting, but is iu 
iny opinion an especially good berry for 
the home garden, in spite of its rather 
disagreeable color. It doesn’t sell well 
except locally, and among people who are 
familiar with it, but it is a fine berry for 
canning and recommends itself to the 
home gardener because it does not sucker. 
High-priced Boxes. —The price of 
boxes lias been a serious item to every¬ 
body selling berries this season. Late in 
the Spring quart boxes could not be ob¬ 
tained for less than $7 a thousand, and 
heard of strawberry growers being 
obliged to pay $9 to get enough boxes to 
carry them through. As is usual in such 
instances, a cheaper substitute has been 
put out. This time it is a paper box. the 
same, size as the ordinary strawberry box. 
ant * " seems to have so many merits that 
probably it will come to be permanent. 
Experiments With Peas.—A n inter¬ 
esting experiment is reported by an ac¬ 
quaintance of mine. Instead of‘planting 
sowing of peas. This seed in turn was 
covered with earth and manure, and a 
third planting made an inch or two below 
the surface. The man claims that by the 
time the early peas had ceased to bear 
and been pulled up those from the deeper 
planting were ready to commence pro¬ 
ducing, thus giving a vei*y long season. 
It is surprising to find how few people 
really know how to pick peas. They will 
dig in with one hand and rip off the pods 
in .such a careless way that the vines are 
loosened at the roots, if not pulled up 
entirely. 
Mulching the Garden. —While the 
early part of the season was not vei*y 
favoidable to the mulching system of gar¬ 
dening, owing to the constant rains, the 
plan has been giving excellent results 
since warmer and drier weather came on. 
I didn’t go to the expense of buying straw 
this year, for the price was rather too 
high for my pocketbook, but used the 
grass as fast as I cut it around the place. 
This grass, after being dried a little, has 
been used to mulch potatoes, strawberries 
and other plants with distinct success. 
It does away with a great amount of hoe¬ 
ing, while suppressing the weeds and 
keeping the ground moist. It’s a fine 
plan to use with tomatoes when they are 
not staked, because they are much less 
liable to rot. It seems to me that this 
mulching system is one which ought to 
recommend itself, especially to women 
who are not strong enough or haven’t the 
time to do very much hoeing or cultivat¬ 
ing. 
Garden Cultivation. —Still, it is true 
as ever that if you tickle the gi*ound with 
the hoe you will make it laugh with the 
harvest. Among the small garden crops 
cultivation is a constant necessity, and it 
cannot always be done with tbe wheel 
hoe, either. One of the best tools which 
I am familiar with for working close 
around vegetables is a common potato 
diggei*. It does a better job than many 
of the higher-priced tools. I shouldn’t 
want to get along, either, without a scuf¬ 
fle hoe. The virtue of this instrument 
may be judged by the fact that dozens of 
them are to be found on every market 
garden. Where the ground is kept worked 
frequently and is not too stony the scuffle 
hoe, which can be pushed or pulled, is a 
most convenient tool. 
The Help Question. —Of course the 
help question is an exceedingly important 
one in all vegetable gardens. In fact, 
lack of help in some cases is resulting in 
a reduction of crops. Boysdiave not been 
so easy to secure as during the war. and 
are never worth the price which has to 
be paid them, running all the way from 
$1.50 for babies, as one market gardener 
describes them, to $3 or $4 a day for high 
school boys. Apparently a few more 
Italian women are available this season, 
and perhaps they will come back to the 
fields in greater numbers as employment 
in the cities at higher wages becomes less 
easy to obtain. 
Cabbage Worms. —It seems to me that 
gardeners delight in finding new ways to 
foil the ubiquitous cabbage worm. I 
think I have mentioned some of these 
remedies in the past. Here is one which 
I heard of last year from a gardenmaker 
in Randolph, Vt. This man says: *‘l’ick 
a few leaves from the tomato plants, 
crush them a little with the hands, lay 
them on the cabbage heads and all the 
worms will be driven away.” This man 
affirms that he has tried this plan for 
several years, and that it has never failed. 
Certainly it is the easiest preventive 
jvhich has yet been reported, if it actually 
Easy Protection)from the Birds. Fig. 402 
works iu all cases. Some people are sat- 
liL n»o« V* Ti , v*°«A au , luaiuiug isfied to throw a little lime or salt, or 
i peas at the usual depth, he put them even dry 
I n ITY1 Aor 5 ■» _ *.1 . 1 . . 
1“ « most eight inches deep, with the 
esuit that they bore through a very much 
longer season than usual, not drying up 
*e the other peas when hot weather 
\ doubt if this would be a good 
I on t0 f, 0 ^ 1U he avy soil, but it may 
litrhx Wi a I 01 ’ gardeners who have reaches the leaves,"but at“the“same time 
iaSr t h»,S°au« 8 t a haf n l » * " its *“• 
^ili pass along without endorsing. He 
inl rh B0Wl H5 of P. ea s a foot deep, cover- 
. garden soil, into the heads. I 
believe that cayenne pepper is another 
time-honored remedy. I believe, too, that 
spraying the heads with water that was 
boiling when taken from the stove is also 
an effective remedy. It gets cool enough 
not to burn the plants by the time it 
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How much too much 
is your barn painting 
costing you? 
Putting the paint on is the 
big cost of painting. Don’t 
forget that. 
A paint that spreads easily 
will be spread farther. It will 
be spread farther, just because 
it is easier to spread it. A 
paint that covers easily and 
thoroughly, takes less brushing 
to make it cover. 
Lowe Brothers’ Paint goes 
farther and costs less to make 
it go. Sometimes it costs more 
per gallon, but always it costs 
less per job. 
Talk to the Lowe dealer in 
your town; or write to us for 
a booklet called—“Figure Your 
Painting Costs with a Brush— 
Not a Pencil.” 
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^‘Lowq Brothers 
510 EAST THIRD STREET, DAYTON, OHIO 
Boston New York Jersey City Chicago Atlanta Kansas City Minneapolis Toronto 
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oieiueiflieieieia 
Makes Every Ounce of Lime 
and Fertilizer Pay a Profit 
T HE John Deere-Van Brunt 
Lime and Fertilizer Sower is a 
paying investment for every 
farmer whose land has been used con¬ 
tinuously even for a few years. 
It covers eight feet of ground, 
carries ten bushels, and distributes 
150 to 8,000 pounds per acre of 
crushed limerock, slacked lime, all 
brands of standard commercial fer¬ 
tilizer, nitrate of soda, land plaster, 
granulated calcium chloride, dry wood 
ashes, etc. 
The Van Brunt improved ro¬ 
tarywing force-feeds are so constructed 
that lime or fertilizer does not drifts 
but is sown evenly from each feed. 
The double-feed shaft, with 
direct wheel drive, allows the operator 
to disengage both feeds for transport¬ 
ing, or one-half the machine indepen¬ 
dent of the other half, simply by re¬ 
leasing the pawls on either wheel. 
Effective oscillating agitators for 
handling unusually difficult fertilizer 
are furnished when ordered. ^ 
Make every ounce of lime and fertilizer you use pay a profit In in¬ 
creased yields by distributing it with a Van Brunt Sower. Write us to¬ 
day, address John Deere, Moline, Ill., and ask for free booklet LF-740. 
RoftxSj.!!? With a little earth. Then lie 
morl t u n some manure, followed by 
e earth, over isvkich he made another 
though, the man who has a large crop of 
cabbages will probably depend in the fu¬ 
ture, as iu tbe past, upon arsenate of 
leud when the plants are small, and liele- 
bore when they get almost ready to bead. 
^ E. I. FARRINGTON. 
JOHNsDEERE 
1 HE TRADE MARK OF QUALITY MADE FAMOUS BY GOOD IMPLEMENTS 
