The Garden Magazine, August, 1924 
401 
instantly into very cold water. Let remain a few moments 
until cool, remove from water and place in a colander, cloth and 
all. They will then drain as you rapidly fill the jars. Pack 
the vegetables tightly in the jars, using a large spoon, and do 
not touch the vegetables with the hands. Place cap on the jar 
while blanching more vegetables, repeating until jar is filled. 
Add i teaspoonful of salt to each quart jar, adjust the rubber, 
fill jar to overflowing with boiling water and put on jar top. 
Use only one clamp, or if a porcelain top be used, turn it just 
against the rubber. Place jar at once in the canner. In filling 
quart jars with corn, peas, or lima beans, fill only to within 2 
inches of the top as these vegetables, being starchy, will expand. 
Now fill the canner with hot water until it is 2 inches over the 
tops of jars, put on cover of canner. All vegetables are steri¬ 
lized ij hours, except corn which is boiled for 3 hours and 
tomatoes which are sterilized only 15 minutes. Then remove 
from canner, tighten tops, cover with towels to keep jars from 
drafts that might crack the jars. When cool, store at once 
in a cool, dark place. 
And that’s all there is to canning! It’s such fun where only 
one or two jars are done at a time and such a treat when winter 
comes. 
Canned Corn: For a quart jar, it requires about ten large ears or 12 to 14 
small ones. Husk, blanch, cold dip, and then cut from the cob, scoring each 
row of kernels first to make the corn fine, taste better, and pack better. Re¬ 
member about leaving room at top of jar for expansion and be sure to add one 
teaspoon of salt to each quart jar, or one-half-spoonful to each pint. 
Canned Vegetable Soup: Yes, you can can your own and you will agree 
that you have added a genuine treat to your winter dinner table. And it’s fun to 
see how many vegetables you can put in, and canned soups never spoil. The 
canning steps are just the same: sterilized jars, tops, and rubbers, vegetables 
blanched and cold-dipped,—but there is this difference, the vegetables are all 
cooked together in a large kettle before canning. Start with those requiring 
longest cooking. Have about a quart of boiling water in the kettle, if you 
are planning to make three or four jars, and then add 3 or 4 cups of sweet corn 
cut from the cob, then one small head of cabbage put through the food-chopper 
(using medium knives), then some okra cut into thin slices that make such pretty 
“stars” in the soup, 3 or 4 onions (put through chopper), carrots cut into dice, 
whole small lima beans, sweet green peppers, cut fine (about 2 of these), green 
and wax beans cut fine, about 3 cups of tomato pulp, peas, stalks of Swiss 
chard cut fine, cauliflower—in fact everything (except potatoes) that you can 
think of! Salt to taste and by the time the peas are added, the mixture is 
ready to can. It should be quite thick (there is no use in canning water). Fill 
jars to overflowing with the soup; after adjusting rubbers, put on tops and 
sterilize i| hours. This will have a flavor quite unlike any soup you have ever 
eaten and you cannot go wrong on proportions, being careful, however, not to 
use too much tomato pulp. If there be any vegetable you dislike, omit it and 
add those you like best. 
Whole Tomatoes: These are delicious for salads when fresh tomatoes are in 
the luxury class in winter. Scald and remove skins, using tomatoes of a size 
not to require squeezing when placing them in the jars. The wider-mouthed 
jars are best for this. Put tomatoes carefully in the jars without breaking, use 
no water, add one teaspoonful of salt, adjust rubbers and tops and sterilize 
for 15 minutes. Or, if desired, the jars may be filled with boiling tomato pulp, 
this to be drained-off (when jar is opened) for soups. 
Spinach, Swiss Chard or Other Greens: Wash thoroughly, and blanch 
by putting them in a steamer over boiling water for 13 minutes. Cold dip at 
once and proceed as for other vegetables. These are delicious. 
HOW THE VANILLA ORCHID SERVES YOUR HOUSEHOLD 
T HE mere word “Orchid” seems synonymous with luxury and 
immediately conjures up pictures of grand dames and debutantes 
in satins and floating draperies with a corsage bouquet of lavender-pink 
tropical beauties as a finishing touch. Never do we think of Orchids 
and kitchens in the same mental breath, as it were, and yet a kitchen 
shelf without its bottle of vanilla would be hard to find, 1 fancy. 
Much of this flavoring extract, particularly of the finer quality, is 
made from the seed-pods of the climbing Orchid, Vanilla planifolia, a 
native of Mexico but now widely cultivated in certain parts of the 
tropics, as the West Indies, Java, Bourbon, Mauritius, and other 
islands where the hot, damp climate suits its disposition. 
The word “vanilla” is the Spanish for “little sheath” or “pod,” 
descriptive, of course, of the pods from which the extract is drawn. 
These pods are picked before they are ripe and dried; the vanillin, which 
contains the aroma and flavor known to us as vanilla, gradually 
crystallizing on the outside of the cured pods. 
Of all the Orchids, Vanilla planifolia is the only one to achieve 
economic importance, demonstrating perhaps that among plants as 
among people the law of compensation holds good and sometimes the 
least showy individuals contribute most in the wav of actual service. 
Certainly the yellow inconspicuous flowers of the Vanilla would never 
draw attention while there are so many of its more impressive kin to 
dazzle folks’ eyes and kindle the imagination with fantastic shapes and 
colors. 
In growing the Vanilla for commercial uses, plants are propagated by 
cuttings anywhere from 2 to 12 feet long. These are either set in the 
ground, or merely tied to a tree without direct connection with the 
earth; in the latter case, however, they soon send out aerial roots, thus 
establishing the connection for themselves. In most places where 
Vanilla.culture is practised, the flowers have to be pollinated bv hand 
as, by some strange oversight of nature, pollinating insects are lacking. 
The plants begin to bear about three years after setting and continue 
to fruit indefinitely, and half a century later will be producing an 
average of about fifty pods each year. 
MY ROCK GARDEN 
G RAY rocks are kindred of the mould 
That brings my seed to flower, 
Companions of the bitter cold 
And of the sunbright hour 
Their gaunt shapes shoulder earth away 
As on some distant glacial day. 
And though I coax the soil to bloom, 
Bordering them with grace, 
Still in my garden’s little room 
The gray rocks keep their place, 
Eternal as the hills that rise, 
And motionless, and old, and wise. 
HILDA MORRIS 
I would not change them for a plot 
That I could smooth and tend. 
Frail climbing tendrils, fear them not, 
And fragile fern leaves bend 
About them, listening, 1 know, 
To wisdom learned from sun and snow. 
My garden wall, while 1 am here, 
Shall compass them about, 
But they shall last for many a year 
When this is put to rout. 
Behind the flowers’ ephemeral wings 
I love these strong, enduring things! 
