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Beans like rich, warm, sandy soil. In order to help the soil make sure you dig deeply, and work it over thoroughly for bean culture. It does not help to plant beans before too early in spring. There is another advantage in early digging of soil. It brings to the surface eggs and larvae of insects. The birds eager for food will even follow the plough to pick from the soil these choice morsels. A little lime worked in with the soil is helpful in the cultivation of beans.

Bush beans are planted in drills about eighteen inches apart, while the pole-bean rows should be three feet apart. The drills for the bush limas should be further apart than those for the other dwarf beans at approximately three feet. This amount of space provides ample space for cultivation with the hoe. If the running beans climb too high just pinch off the growing end, and this will hold back the upward growth.

Among bush beans you will find the dwarf, snap or string beans, the wax beans, the bush limas, one variety of which is known as brittle beans. Among the pole beans you will find the pole limas, wax and scarlet runner. The scarlet runner is a beauty for decorative effects. The flowers are scarlet and are fine against an old fence. These are quite lovely in the flower garden. Where you wish to have a vine, this is good plant for it. You get both a vegetable, bright flowers and a screen from the scarlet runner. When planting beans put the bean in the soil edgewise with the eye down.

Beets like rich, sandy loam, too. Fresh manure worked into the soil is fatal for beets, as it is for many other crop. But supposing you have nothing available but fresh manure. Then you have to work this into the soil with great care and thoroughness. But even so, there is danger of this manure getting next to a tender beet root. Try the following — dig a trench about a foot deep, spread a thin layer of manure in this, cover it with soil, and plant above this. By the time the main root strikes down to the manure layer, there will be little harm done. Beets should not be transplanted. If the rows are one foot apart there is ample space for cultivation. Wait for the weather to be really settled, before planting these seeds. Young beet tops make fine greens. Greater care than usual should be taken when handling beets. If the tip of the root and the tops are cut off, the beet bleeds. This means a loss of good material if you intend to boil the beets. Pinch off such parts with the fingers and not too closely to the beet itself.

The bigger and coarser members of the beet and cabbage families are the mangel wurzel and ruta baga. These are planted to feed to the cattle. They are a great addition to a cow's dinner.

The cabbage family is a large one. There is the cabbage proper, cauliflower, broccoli or a more hardy cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi, a cabbage-turnip combination.

Cauliflower is a kind of refined, high-toned cabbage relative. It needs a little richer soil than cabbage and cannot stand the frost. A frequent watering with manure water gives it the extra richness and water it really needs. The outer leaves must be bent over to get the white head, in the case of the young cabbage.. It is best to plant the dwarf varieties.

Kale is a hardier cousin. It can stand frost. Rich soil is necessary, and plant in early spring. This is because it matures slowly. It may also be planted in September for early spring work.

Brussels sprouts are a very popular member of this family. Because of their size many people who find cabbage poor and all too common may prefer Brussels sprouts instead. The growth of Brussels sprouts is interesting. The plant stalk runs skyward. At the top is a close head of leaves like an umbrella, but this is not what we eat. Shaded by the umbrella and packed all along the stalk are delicious little cabbages or sprouts. Like the rest of the family a rich soil is needed and plenty of water during the growing period. The seed should be planted in May, and the little plants transplanted into rich soil in late July. The rows should be eighteen inches apart, and the plants one foot apart in the rows.

Kohlrabi is somewhere between the families of cabbage and turnip. It is sometimes called the turnip-root cabbage. Just above the ground, the stem of this plant swells into a turnip-like vegetable. With the true turnip the swelling is underground, but kohlrabi forms its edible part above ground like cabbage. It is easy to grow. Get it to develop rapidly, otherwise the swelling gets woody, and so loses its good quality. Sow as early as possible; or sow in March and then transplant to the open. Plant in drills about two feet apart. Set the plants about one foot apart, or thin out to this distance. To plant one hundred feet of drill buy half an ounce of seed. Seed goes a long way, you see. Kohlrabi is served and prepared like turnip. It is a very satisfactory early crop.

Before leaving the cabbage family you may wish to try a cabbage called Savoy. This is an excellent variety. It should be planted early under cover, say in February, and then be transplanted into open beds in March or April. If the land is poor where you are to grow cabbage, then by all means choose Savoy.

There are two kinds of carrots — those with long roots, and those with short roots. If long-rooted varieties are chosen, then the soil must be worked down to a depth of eighteen inches. The shorter ones will do well in eight inches of well-worked sandy soil. Do not put carrot seed into freshly manure land. Another point to note with carrots is the thinning process. As the little seedlings come up you will doubtless find that they are much, much too close together. Wait a bit, thin a little at a time, so that young, tiny carrots can be used on your table at home.

Cucumber is the next vegetable to consider. This is an exotic foreign plant. Some think that the cucumber is really a native of India. A light, sandy and rich soil is needed. Rich in the sense of organic matter. When cucumbers are grown outdoors they are planted in hills. Nowadays, they are grown in greenhouses and they hang from the roof. This is a wonderful sight. A hive of bees is usually kept in the greenhouse to promote cross-fertilization.

Follow these directions to raise cucumbers — sow the seed indoors, cover with one inch of rich soil. In a little space of six inches diameter, plant six seeds. Place like a bean seed with the germinating end in the soil. When there is no danger of frost, transplant it in the open together with the soil in a set of six little plants each. Later, when there is no danger of insect pests, plant it in a hill and thin out to three plants. The hills should be about four feet apart on all sides.

lettuce was grown and served a very long time ago. First there was wild lettuce, then cultivated lettuce. There are a number of cultivated vegetables which have wild ancestors, carrots, turnips and lettuce being the most common among them. Lettuce may be tucked into the garden almost anywhere. It is definitely one of the most decorative vegetables. The compact head, the green of the leaves, the symmetric beauty are the charming characteristics of lettuces.

As the summer advances and as the early sowings of lettuce get old they will produce seed. Don't let them. Pull them up. None of us are likely to go into lettuce seed production. We are only interested in raising tender lettuce all season. To have such lettuce in mid and late summer is possible only if you plant seed frequently. If seed is planted every ten days or two weeks all summer, you can have tender lettuce all season. When lettuce gets old it becomes bitter and tough.

Melons are most interesting to experiment with. We believe that melons originally came from Asia, and parts of Africa. Melons are a summer fruit. In England we find muskmelons often grow under glass in greenhouses. The vines are trained upward rather than allowed to lie prone. In the right conditions, the melons grow large in the hot, dry atmosphere and become too heavy for the vine to hold up. So they are held up by little bags of netting, the mesh is about the size of a tennis net. These bags are supported on nails or pegs. I can assure you that it is a pretty sight. Here we usually we grow our melons outdoors. They are planted in hills. Eight seeds are placed two inches apart and an inch deep. The hills should have a four foot sweep on all sides; the watermelon hills ought to have an allowance of eight to ten feet. Make the soil for these hills very rich. As the little plants grow big to say about four inches in height, reduce the number of plants to two in a hill. Always choose the sturdiest plants to keep. Cut the others down close to or a little below the surface of the ground. Pulling up plants is a shocking way to get rid of them. This is because the pull is likely to disturb the roots of the two remaining plants. When the melon plant has reached a length of a foot, pinch off the end of it. This pinch will stop the plant growing in length and take the time to grow branches. Sand or lime sprinkled about the hills ought to keep bugs away.

The word pumpkin evokes feelings of good, old-fashioned pies, for Thanksgiving and for grandmother's house. It should evoke more emotions than the word squash. I suppose the squash is a bit more useful when we think of the nice little crooked-necked summer squashes. But I'd like to have more pumpkins. In planting these, the same general conditions are required as for melons. And use these same for planting squash too. Do not plant the two cousins together, for they have a tendency to run together. Plant the pumpkins in between the hills of corn and let the squashes go in some other part of the garden.

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