SZ 
Hand 

sx A YEAR AGO when I was or- 
dering my Eastern States garden seeds 
I bought a few extra packages of’ 
beans, peas, onions, etc., and made 
up a parcel and sent it across to our 
friend, Mrs. Young, living now in 
northern England. 
I thought you might be interested 
in the letter that my wife received 
from England the other day. 
As I remember, the beans, upon 
which such a glowing report is made, 
were one of your standard varieties 
of wax beans — Alan MacLeod, Beach 
Hall, Storrs, Connecticut. 
yy LETTER FROM ENGLAND — 
. was so delighted to have your 
letter and packets of seeds. 
About two days after I wrote to 
you last our house on ga island off the 
south of England was bombed, but 
mercifully we all escaped with our 
lives, but of course very shaken. We 

j SOIL IMPROVEMENT is really 
practiced at Critchett Farm, Orleans, 
Massachusetts. Manager Raymond 
A. Eldredge grows three crops a 
year on the same land — one of them 
potatoes, too! 
His system works, as the pictures 
here show. After harvesting a good 
managed to have it patched up enough 
to live in without window-glass or 
ceilings, etc., and we stuck it out for 
about six weeks, but ‘‘they’’ came 
again and again, and Terry (the 
writer’s son) got so nervous having 
to be thrown down in the road sud- 
denly and laid on, while the ‘‘Devils’’ 
bombed and machine-gunned us, fly- 
ing roof-top height with no warning 
at all, you hadn't time to take cover. 
However, my husband said I must 
take Terry inland somewhere and as 
we had relatives here, we came, and 
have been here ever since. 
Ihave a little bit of garden here and 
we had two rows of peas and onions 
and one row of beans which were 
lovely. The beans we showed all 
round the village; nothing had been 
seen like them before. They were 
pure yellow. Every one was most in- 
terested, as this is a market garden 
district. — Elsie Young, Green Farm, 
Tewkesbury, England. 
yx EACH YEAR at the end of the 
garden planting season I find quite a 
few lots of seeds that for some reason 
ot other did not get into the ground 
(not a unique experience, I imagine). 
I believe that I have somewhere seen 
a chart or table telling the length of 
time different seeds retain their vi- 
tality. In these days when seeds are 
scarce and we are urged to conserve 
crop of Cobbler potatoes, he seeded 
buckwheat on August 22. By Septem- 
ber 26 he was discing in the heavy 
growth shown. This land was im- 
mediately reseeded to wheat and 
vetch which came along fast enough 
to make good winter cover. On May 
24 that crop was plowed under and 
and save, would it not be well to 
print in the garden seed number of 
the CoopEerator such a table so that 
the members may know which old 
seeds to use and which should be 
discarded? — Paul Thayer, Fruitland, 
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. 
Editor’s Comment: We did carry 
such a chart in the January issue 
of the Cooprrator for a number of 
years. It must be realized that any 
such table is only a general guide to 
go by and not accurate for any par- 
ticular lot of seeds. The conditions 
under which the seed is stored, as 
well as the initial vitality, can vary 
the length of time the seeds will grow 
between very wide limits. Therefore, 
it was our thought that the space 
could be used to better advantage for 
some other purpose. Most any kind 
of Eastern States vegetable seed, ex- 
cept possibly parsnip, parsley, and 
salsify, can safely be kept over and 
used a second year, especially if it is 
kept in a dry and cool place. How- 
ever, the only safe way to know for 
sure regarding the germination and 
vitality of any lot of seed is to try it 
shortly before seeding in a germina- 
tion test. If the lots of seed are small 
and a germination test is inconven- 
ient, the practical thing to do is to 
store it in as dry and as cool a place 
as possible and use first next season. 
the land was ready for more potatoes 
—having been enriched and im- 
proved by TWO green manure crops. 
Now this cannot be duplicated all 
over Eastern States territory because 
Orleans is out on Cape Cod with 
a long, favorable growing season. 
But it’s worth thinking about. 
