I make my first planting in a cold frame, from which I transplant a few heads to the open ground, and eat the remainder thinning it as it grows. I like May King and Black-seeded Tennis Ball for this. Then as early as possible, I plant in the open, five foot rows of May King, Black-seeded Tennis Ball, Mignonette and Crisp as Ice (listed by only one seedsman, that I know of) and any new varieties with which I am experimenting. When these are large enough to transplant, I set out as many as I want in rows one foot apart, and eight inches or a foot in the row, to head. Meanwhile I have been thinning the rows as required and eating what I thinned out. In about two or three weeks I make another planting including Paris White Cos, and my last about August 1. In the last planting I make my rows three times as long and thin in the row for heading as well as transplant because I find that transplanting at that time of the year sets the plants back enough to make a much later crop. By covering these transplanted heads, with the cheese cloth screen, or lifting a few to the cold frame, I have had lettuce until the middle of November.

The soil is prepared with manure as usual before ploughing and dragging, and then fined all the old powdery manure raked up from where the big pile stcod. that I can rake or work in, I put in. When my seedlings are up, I water the ground once a week or ten days, with a solution of one ounce of nitrate of soda in one gallon of water, and continue to do so until the heads are well formed. When the seed is sowed and watered I cover the ground in hot sunny or dry weather with the cheese cloth screen, and the August planting is grown almost entirely with it until September brings cooler days. Please let me konw the result of your experiments?

HINTS FROM AN OLD MAID'S GARDEN FOR HOME GARDENERS.

Beans. Home gardeners are usually limited as to space and time, and therefore will find bush beans and dwarf peas more economical in brush, poles, wire netting, ground space, and cultivation as to area, than the tall growing sorts.

Those who have not tried the bush lima beans miss one of the chief delicacies of the garden. Many suppose that the limas will not ripen here because our season is too short, but I get here in Madison, a good long season of them.

The Fordhook Bush Lima is comparatively new, is prolific although not equal in that respect to Wood's Prolific, early, rich, buttery, and delicious, belonging to the potato lima class.

The Thorburn (or Dreer) Bush Lima is similar to the foregoing, but much later, bearing until the garden is entirely frozen up. It has been my stand-by for several years, and the beans are delicious cooked fresh or canned.

The Wood's Prolific Bush Lima, an improved edition of Henderson's Bush, belongs to a different class of bean, the sieva bean, and to my taste is not as nice as the two first named, but it is useful as coming between the two first in point of time, as affording a change of variety, and also and chiefly because of its ability to withstand drouth. In my garden last year the Fordhook matured for picking before the drouth, the Wood's Prolific furnished good picking during the drouth, while my favorite Thorburn's were laden with pods which shrivelled and dried up. As soon as the rain came the Thorburn's blossomed and would have had a good crop again, but were frozen down just before the beans were ready to pick.

I plant them all in well manured ground, sprinkling in addition artificial fertilizer over the row at the time of sowing and two or three times more between the time the plants come up and pods are formed.

Last year one of the pleasant surprises the garden gave was the fine crop obtained from a twenty-five foot row of Early Valentine beans in September and October. During the drouth when the ground was baked so hard in the hard clay forming my soil that I had to chop out the furrow with the point of a potato-hoe I sowed my Early Valentines. After digging the

furrow, I watered it thoroughly, then put in the beans and covered them half the depth of the furrow, about two inches with earth, which I watered thoroughly again, and then filled up the rest of the furrow with dry earth. The plants came up in the usual time without further watering and bore a fine crop, assisted by the cheese-cloth screen, until well into October.

CANNING VEGETABLES FROM THE HOME GARDEN— SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.

BLANCHARD HARPER, Madison, Wis.

(See Vol. XXXIX, p. 214.)

Everyone interested in the canning of vegetables as described in my notes in the Report for 1909, should procure from the Agricultural Dept. at Washington, Farmer's Free Bulletin No. 359, "Canning Vegetables in the Home." Naturally I prefer my own methods, but the bulletin contains so much that is valuable that every one interested in the subject should secure a

copy.

One fact stated there solved for me a problem that had long puzzled me; namely that peas gathered from the same vines within a day of one another should taste so differently when canned. A farmer grew for me two bushels of "Advancer" peas picked them in the evening and drove six miles the next day to deliver them. They seemed in good condition. I canned some that day and the remainder the next. Those cans of peas kept perfectly-there was no sign of spoiling, but they were as flat and tasteless as sawdust. I find the explanation in the following statement the author of the bulletin Mr. J. I. Breazeale, makes in regard to corn, one which I believe holds true in regard to all sweet vegetables, and on which too much stress cannot be put. After stating that vegetables should be gathered fresh, if possible with the dew on them, and kept damp of corn the amount of sugar diminishes very rapidly after the

ear is pulled from the stalk; therefore in order to retain the original sweetness and flavor it is necessary to can corn very soon after it is pulled, within an hour if possible." Incidentally I may add that for table use I have kept corn twenty-four or forty-eight hours with but slight loss of flavor, by laying each ear in the husks directly on ice, but not in any other way.

The following recipes are in use by several successful housewives and are contributed as affording a means of keeping corn when otherwise variously possible conditions would prevent canning.

Canned Corn. (Mrs. Frank Mac Connell.) A recipe very generally used. To 9 pints of fresh corn cut from the cob, add one pint of sugar, and one pint of salt (if the salt is very strong use 1/2 pint), and three pints of water. Boil all together for five minutes and pack while hot in thoroughly sterilized jars. To serve soak in several changes of water to remove the salt; cook with a little cream until scalding hot.

Dried Corn, as made on the Turvill Farm, by Mrs. Elizabeth F. Wood. Gather tender fresh corn, boil it in water three minutes, drain and cool; then cut the grains from the cob, but not too close. Spread the kernals in a thin layer in a large pan and place in a cool oven, stirring and shaking from time to time to allow it to heat and dry evenly for several hours. The flavor seems better if the drying is not prolonged over a day. When dry store loosely in a paper bag kept in a dry place. To serve, soak over night in water, then simmer gently on the back of the stove for several hours, and add butter and cream before sending to the table.

Dried Corn as made by Mrs. Albert J. Lamson. Gather the corn when best for the table, score the kernals with a knife and press out the pulp, or use a "corn scorer. Take as many enameled pans or plates as required, grease them lightly with butter and spread the pulp thinly over the bottom of the plates, the layer should not be more than 1/4 inch thick. Place the pans in an oven not warm enough to burn or scorch the corn, but warm enough to cook it, and allow them to remain until the corn thickens, so that it can be cut into wafers 3 inches square. Gently turn the wafers to allow the under side to finish drying in the now cooler oven, or finish the drying in any suitable warm dry place. Corn begun in the morning should be done.

*

and cool until used, he says, when he speaks of corn, "that experiments * have proved that in the sweet varieties by night. To serve, soak the wafers a few minutes, and cook with salt, butter and cream.

WISCONSIN A FRUIT STATE.

(Read by G. W. REIGLE at the National Land Congress, Chicago, Nov. 15th, 1909.)

Nearly 54,000 square miles. If we were to pick up the state of Wisconsin and spread her over the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusets there would be left uncovered just enough foreign cranberry-bog to bury without ceremony and without a tear the entire Minnesota foot-ball aggregation.

Wisconsin follows the fashion of the north in persisting to elect republican governors and emphatically proclaims J. O. Davidson the most democratic executive she ever had.

Her senators are known from ocean to ocean each occupying pedestals coveted by many anxious friends of the people; one is accused of having amassed a million but totally lacking in the ability to spend it, according to the moral standard set up by his critics; the other is charged with unprofessional irregularities in politics, often calls the roll, meets all gradiators, bunched, in the political arena and the latest advices report him very much alive.

Wisconsin has the greatest University in the west, her cities are annexing farm lands in every direction to accommodate their amazing growth; her farmers are becoming rich and her thousands of undeveloped acres are rapidly becoming the dwelling place of properous and happy immigrants.

Is Wisconsin on the map commercially? Let us see! Chicago lies just off the south-east corner, Milwaukee and other large cities near by. Duluth, Superior, St. Paul and Minneapolis nestle at the corner diagonally across the state. Shall I say that Kansas City and St. Louis are near the south-west corner? Some loyal Badger must say, yes; and also that trade routes by