February, 1919 
45 
The ideal type of beet for table use or canning 
is the round variety. Beets should never be 
allowed to get old 
Always keep the tomatoes picked clean. 
Whatever surplus there may be can be 
canned. Garden costume by Best 
is purely a matter for individual adjustment, 
but you should surely have not less than four 
for spring and two for fall. If you have the 
necessary space, by all means make additional 
sowings, as good peas are never wasted. 
It takes twelve ears of corn to fill a pint jar 
when scraped from the cob. I don’t believe 
that twelve ears would be considered too many 
for a meal for the five members of our hypo¬ 
thetical family—if I were one-fifth of that 
family I could answer “no,” very definitely! 
A row of SO' in drills should produce. ninety 
ears, including the nubbins, or about seven or 
eight jars to the row. Our family of five is 
certainly going to have six rows, for which pur¬ 
pose we will need one pint of seed. Whether 
sown in hills or drills, the productive value is 
the same. 
Lima beans are one of the real delicacies of 
the home garden. Few 
vegetables dry out and 
lose their good qualities 
as quickly as the lima. 
That is why you must 
have your own garden 
to know what a real 
lima is like. Pole beans 
are better producers 
than the bush types, but 
it is not always possible 
to get the poles, so our 
bush type fills a little 
niche in the hall of ne¬ 
cessity. It takes three 
quarts of pods to shell 
out one pint of young 
beans of the kind that 
are tender and succu¬ 
lent. One hill should 
produce during the sea¬ 
son from fifteen to 
eighteen quarts of pods, 
or five pints of shelled 
beans ;■ twenty poles will 
allow us fifty pint cans 
for winter and the same 
quantity for use during 
the summer. Fifty feet 
of drill of the bush lima should yield about 
half that quantity. One pint of seed will be 
sufficient for 50' of drill or twenty hills of the 
larger seeded type of pole beans. 
Spinach and Eight Others 
Spinach is a very hard crop for which to de¬ 
termine quantities. There should be some bal¬ 
ing device for pressing it into shape so you 
could tell somewhere near what your yield was. 
You can cut a washtub full, cook it, and if 
there is company for dinner there will be so 
little that you’ll be ashamed to put it on the 
table. From two large, heaping baskets, well 
packed, I had just six pint cans; a row 50' 
long gave me six cans. Six rows in spring and 
four in the fall will give a goodly supply. 
Swiss chard is much coarser than spinach 
and does not shrink so much in the cooking; 
besides, you have the advantage of continuous 
growth throughout the summer. From a row 
of 20' we have canned eighteen jars and had 
all we cared for on the table; in addition to 
The intermediate length carrot is the best for general use, whether on the table or pre¬ 
served. For a number of reasons this is the proper size for canning. Scraping and cutting 
off the tops and rootlets are necessary preliminaries 
Swiss chard stalks, as well the leaves, are 
worth canning. This vegetable is very pro¬ 
lific—a 20' row will be ample 
this, six cans of the stems were put up for win¬ 
ter use. This season my row of Swiss chard is 
to be only 15', as I found that we could not 
possibly use. all that the 20' of drill produced. 
Tomatoes are canned in so many different 
ways that it is a hard matter to gauge accu¬ 
rately the space required to produce a given 
amount when put up. When preserved whole 
it takes less than one-third the quantity to fill 
a can than when cooked. However, from two 
rows, each 50' long—that is, thirty-two plants, 
sixteen to a row—we had all the fruit we could 
use for salads and cooking and put away 
thirty-two cans for winter use. It is of course 
understood that the canning was not all done at 
one time; when enough fruit was ripe to war¬ 
rant canning the preserving kettle was brought 
forth and the jars put away for the winter. 
Squash and pumpkins were not put up in 
cans, as with any rea¬ 
sonable care they may 
be kept until late win¬ 
ter. It seems like wast¬ 
ing materials to pre¬ 
serve them. Dehydrat¬ 
ing is unquestionably 
the proper system to 
employ for the preserv¬ 
ing of bulky vegetables 
of this type. 
Cucumbers we have 
always planted spar¬ 
ingly. Where I live 
there are not many doc¬ 
tors, and the stomach¬ 
aches are both expen¬ 
sive and painful. But 
if you like them (cu¬ 
cumbers, not stomach¬ 
aches), I would sug¬ 
gest leaving room for 
six hills, planting them 
three times—two hills 
at each sowing. If you 
keep the vines sprayed 
about every fortnight 
{Continued on 
page 52) 
