The Care of Winter Vegetables 
How to Extend the Value of the Garden 
By J. V. ROACH 
V EGETABLES, if properly cared for, can be 
as toothsome in the long, cold winter months 
as during their season of growth. The first 
thing needful is a good, well ventilated, frost-proof 
cellar. Potatoes keep best in small bins or barrels 
in a dark, dry corner of the cellar. The potatoes 
should be watched and looked over at the first sign of 
sprouting. When potatoes sprout during the winter, 
either they are a very early variety or the cellar is too 
warm. 
Along one end of the cellar make a partition 
eighteen inches from the wall and the height of your 
celery when it is standing. Dig the celery, letting 
the dirt cling to the roots, and pack tightly in the 
space between the boards and the wall so that the 
tops of the plants make a solid mass of green just 
visible above the low partition. Sprinkle lightly 
with cold water about once a month and you will have 
crisp, well blanched celery throughout the winter. 
Beets, carrots, turnips, in fact all roots, are best 
kept in rather shallow boxes with a covering of dry 
sand. The same sand can be used for several years 
if you bring it up during the summer and expose it 
to the air and the sunshine. A mixture of two parts 
sand and one part earth will keep horseradish roots as 
fresh as though right from the garden. The parsnip 
is a vegetable which is better for freezing and should 
be left in the ground. A few cabbages buried in a 
trench in the garden are good for late spring consump¬ 
tion as they cannot be dug up until the frost is out of 
the ground. For the cabbages intended for winter 
use, remove the outside leaves, leaving the stem on, 
and tie paper sacks or newspapers over the head. 
Hang up by the stems to the rafters in the cellar and 
the cabbage will not only keep well, but there will 
not be the usual unpleasant odor. Squash and 
pumpkins keep best in a dry, cool, frost-proof store¬ 
room. Both of these vegetables should be gathered 
with a piece of the stem remaining on them. Old- 
fashioned, yellow pumpkins, with a bit of stem left on, 
will keep nicely until mid-winter in a dry, cool place. 
Onions should be left out of the cellar as long as 
possible. A slight frost will not hurt them and a 
hard freeze will not damage them beyond repair if 
they are not allowed to thaw out until cooked. 
A root of parsley can be kept in a box of earth in 
front of the cellar window, fresh and green for gar¬ 
nishing, if watered throughout the winter. 
O 7 O 
Nature Studies in Winter 
By HENRY ATTERBURY SMITH 
A T this time of the year, many feel, verdure 
being dormant, that one is deprived of the 
continuance of the pleasure that he enjoyed 
during the summer, and that he must wait for a further 
development of his interests until the trees bud out 
and come again into leaf. This is not entirely the 
case by any means for to the real lover of shrubs and 
trees winter provides an opportunity of studying 
characteristics, which cannot so well be studied at 
any other time. 
For instance, consider the many berry-bearing 
shrubs and trees that take on an entirely new 
appearance after the leaves have fallen, also the 
many colored barks that would not have an op¬ 
portunity of setting forth their distinctive beauty 
without the snow as a background, and again think 
of the beautiful tracery of the huge limbs blend¬ 
ing into smaller branches and still into twigs, all 
clothed in summer with a mass of foliage with which 
our acquaintance is usually more intimate, which are 
only visible in the winter. 
“To the real lover of trees they are equally beauti¬ 
ful and interesting at all seasons of the year; and no 
ones knows trees well who cannot distinguish the dif¬ 
ferent species as easily in winter as in spring or sum¬ 
mer. Almost every tree has some special and peculiar 
beauty, that is seen to the best advantage in winter.” 
Such is the statement and experience of Mr. Sargent 
and of many that have happened to consider the mat¬ 
ter. It is, however, more difficult for the casual obser¬ 
ver to classify a tree as easily without its leaf or 
blossom as it is with. We would call our readers’ 
attention to an excellent book by Miss Huntington, 
entitled “Studies of Trees in Winter,” and to those 
who happen to frequent either Prospect or Central 
Parks, New York City, to the books by Louis Har¬ 
man Peet. These books make one’s studies quite as 
direct in winter as at any other time of the year. 
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