getting more earth than is necessary inside; and if it is necessary to water after starting it to blanch or after it is stored, care should be taken to get water only on the roots, as water inside the head will promote decay. To water, use a piece of pipe or hose and funnel to avoid getting water on tops. A wet root system and a dry top is ideal.

To store celery for winter put earth only on roots.

Cauliflower requires the same treatment as cabbage, and for best results the crop must be put in about July 1 so as to mature after hot weather. The leaves must be either broken over or tied together to protect heads after heading. Early Snowball is a good early variety; Large Algiers a good late one.

FIG. 374.-CELERY BLANCHED BY MEANS OF BOARDS, FLUSHING, L. I.

Egg plant is very tender and requires about the same treatment as the tomato. At the start it must be carefully watched to prevent injury from potato beetles. Black Beauty is a good variety. Okra is a southern vegetable but excellent to use in connection with tomatoes, or in soup. It should not be planted until the ground is warm, in rows 212 feet apart and 12 feet apart in the row. White Velvet is a good variety. Use pods when young and tender; cut up as string beans.

Peppers will never do well if put out before weather and ground are warm. They grow rapidly and are ready to use in a

comparatively short time after planting, if warm conditions prevail, but they require lots of heat to develop quickly. Chinese Giant is the best variety.

Salsify, or Vegetable Oyster, is used as a substitute for oysters, tastes as good and is more nutritious. Sow early in spring, thin to 3 inches in the row, dig in the fall and store as beets; or it may be left in the ground all winter and used in the spring. Mammoth Sandwich Island is the best variety.

Rhubarb, or pie plant, with asparagus, demands a permanent place in every garden, furnishing material for delicious pies or sauce long before berries or fruit are obtainable. It is very hardy and requires no winter protection, although vigor and earliness are enhanced by covering during the winter with coarse manure. It may be grown from seed sown in early spring, as with onions. Later the plants should be thinned to six or eight inches in the The next spring the yearling roots should be set as early as possible, in rows four feet apart and an equal distance in the row, with the crown of the plants level or slightly below the surface of the ground. Or, roots may be purchased and a year's time saved.

row.

Rhubarb is a rank feeder and the soil should be full of humus, supplemented annually by liberal dressings of manure. The more thorough the tillage, the more satisfactory will be the crop. No crops should be gathered until the third year after planting, in order that a strong root growth may be established. Only the larger stalks should be pulled, leaving the others to assist in maintaining the plant. Seeds should be removed promptly as they exhaust the plant.

After rhubarb has been out a long time the stalks are apt to be small. When this occurs the roots should be cut out and thrown away. They are not as desirable for starting a new plantation as young, vigorous plants.

If this cutting out is done in the late fall, and the roots taken out are allowed to freeze, and are then planted in boxes in the cellar, they will start to grow; and one may have the white tender stalks to use during the winter.

Turnips have value both for the table and for feeding stock. For summer use I would advise growing kohlrabi, which, strictly

speaking, is not a turnip. The seed can be sown in the hotbed, or, as soon as the ground is fit, in the open, in rows 14 inches apart and about 4 inches distant in the row. Transplant about the same time as early cabbage. They should be gathered before they are full size.

The common strap-leaf purple turnip can be sown between the rows at the last cultivation of corn or potatoes, and in a wet season will make a good crop either in the garden or field. They can be sown the last of July after the early peas have been gathered.

Rutabagas in New York State should be sown in late May or early June, in drills 18 inches apart in the garden and in the field far enough apart to work with a horse. After they are established they should be thinned to 8 or 10 inches in the row. Rutabagas grow best when the nights are cool.

I have left asparagus until last, not because I consider it of less importance, but because I want to take it up a little more fully. There is nothing I can think of as being a greater acquisition to the average garden than a good asparagus bed, and it takes but a comparatively small one to furnish an ample supply for the average family. One hundred plants set 18 inches apart in the row and if more than one row, 4 feet apart should be ample. The Palmetto is an excellent variety. If the bed is to be plowed over plants should be set 12 inches deep.

Again we must have plant food under the plants for best success. A trench eighteen or twenty inches wide with two or three inches of well-rotted manure well trodden down, and three inches of good soil on that, is ideal. Cover plants only two or three inches at time of setting and work earth in during the summer, having all level by fall. After that cut tops when killed by frost and burn, give light dressing of manure to work in in spring and keep free from weeds. The second year some may be cut and the third year a full crop. The bed will remain for many years. This is satisfactory garden treatment.

VALUABLE TOOLS

Where there are not too many stones, a plank drag is excellent, and, alternated with a spike-tooth harrow, will do away with much raking. When the ground is comparatively free from stone, the combined wheel hoe and seeder is a great labor saver. Where this is not practical the implement made by putting five small cultivator teeth on a handle like a hoe, and that are adjustable, is almost indispensable. By drawing it either each side. or between the rows, much work can be done.

SOILS AND FERTILIZERS FOR VEGETABLES

J. F. BARKER

Agronomist, New York Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y.

Soils to be well suited to the growing of vegetables should be light in texture, thoroughly underdrained, but well sup plied with moisture. This usually means deep sandy loams, loams and muck soils. The physical properties of the soil and nearness to market are more important factors to be considered than natural fertility, for the latter can be supplied more easily than the first can be modified. The necessity for frequent stirring, ridging and

even handling of the soil in vegetable growing constitutes in itself sufficient reason why soils of light texture should be selected. But where early and rapid growth and quick maturity are important considerations, it is only the light, sandy or muck soils that can be used. Such soils warm up much earlier in the spring, admit of more rapid decomposition of organic matter and formation of nitrates and more rapid movement of plant-food solutions in the soil. These crops, on such soils, can be planted earlier in the spring and brought to maturity in a shorter time than on heavier types of soil. However, almost any soil can be made to grow a good crop of vegetables, and for home use any type of soil available may be so employed. The sandy soils will not produce so large a crop as somewhat heavier soils under the same conditions, and so for late vegetables the loams or even silt loams are to be preferred.

FERTILIZERS AND MANURES

The liberal use of fertilizers nearly always plays an important part in vegetable growing. There is almost no soil naturally so well stocked with fertility that it can be very long cropped intensively, and with greatest profit, without the use of fertilizers.

Furthermore, on account of location and ability to produce early crops, soils of low natural fertility are often the ones best adapted to trucking purposes. Principles regarding the maintenance of fertility in connection with vegetable growing are not radically different from those applicable in general farming; but considerations of earliness, quality and price of crop, together with peculiarities of soil, make necessary the more extended and special use of fertilizers. The maintenance of organic matter is here as everywhere of prime importance, and the use of any amount of highpriced easily soluble plant food will not make up for a lack of it. If chemical fertilizers alone are depended upon, the tendency is for it to require more and more of them each year to produce the same results, and a condition may soon be reached where their cost will equal or exceed the profit from their use.

The principles of crop rotation are also, from a fertility point of view, just as important in connection with vegetable growing as in general farming. It is much more difficult to maintain satisfactory yields when any one crop is grown continuously on the same land than if it is grown in a systematic rotation with other crops. However, special demands may sometimes make it advisable to sacrifice something in yield for the sake of specializing in a certain crop.

Manures and Green Manures

In the vicinities of cities stable manure is very largely depended upon to keep up fertility. Where this can be had in liberal amounts no chemicals may be needed and no other provisions made for keeping up organic matter. Yet very often a phosphorus fertilizer will be profitable in addition to manure and will help produce a better quality of crop and earlier maturity. Where manure is used only in moderate quantities phosphorus should always be used with it at the rate of 300 to 1000 pounds per acre of acid phosphate. On muck soils some potash will be needed in addition, and with market-garden crops on any soil both nitrogen and potash may be needed as mentioned later on. The use of manure can be overdone on some crops, such as potatoes, and in other cases it may induce too much vegetable growth or late maturity. The remedy, then, is less manure and more phosphoric acid and potash; but with the scarcity of manure its too liberal