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TWENTY-FIVE BY SEVENTY FOOT PLOT WILL PRODUCE ENOUGH VEGETABLES FOR A SMALL FAMILY.—­Even the smallest back yard may be made to yield a supply of fresh vegetables for the family table at but slight expense if two or three crops are successively grown to keep the area occupied all the time, according to the garden specialists of the department.  People who would discharge a clerk if he did not work the year round will often cultivate a garden at no little trouble and expense and then allow the soil to lie idle from the time the first crop matures until the end of the season.  Where a two or three crop system is used in connection with vegetables adapted to small areas, a space no larger than twenty-five by seventy feet will produce enough fresh vegetables for a small family.  Corn, melons, cucumbers, and potatoes and other crops which require a large area should not be grown in a garden of this size.  Half an acre properly cultivated with a careful crop rotation may easily produce $100 worth of various garden crops in a year.

Plums That We Already Have and Plums That Are on the Way.

The Brown Rot (Monilia) a Controlling Factor.

DEWAIN COOK, FRUIT GROWER, JEFFERS.

By the term “plums we already have” for the purpose of this paper we shall include only those varieties that have given general satisfaction over a large territory and for long term of years, and in the writer’s opinion every one of such varieties are of full blooded, pure Americana origin.

The DeSoto takes the lead of them all.  It undoubtedly has more good points to its credit than any other plum we have ever grown.  The Wyant and the freestone Wolf are considered as being the next two most popular varieties.  These were all wild varieties, found growing in the woods of Wisconsin and Iowa many years ago.

There are a few other Americana varieties that are nearly as good as are some of those enumerated, but at present we shall not attempt to name them.  There are many otherwise fine varieties that are not included in this list of plums we already have, but because of a certain weakness of the blossom they require to be intermingled with other varieties, or the blossoms do not fertilize properly.  They only bear well when conditions are very favorable.  We class such varieties as being not productive enough.

Many attempts, with more or less—­generally less—­success have been made to improve our native plums through the growing of seedlings.  Mr. H.A.  Terry, of Crescent, Iowa, has done more of such work in his day than any other one man.  His method was to plant the Americana kinds, like the DeSoto, alongside of varieties of the Hortulana type, like the Miner, then growing seedlings from the best plums thus grown.  From such cross bred seedlings Mr. Terry originated and introduced a great many very fine varieties.  But where are they today?  The Hawkeye and the Terry are about the only ones the general public knows very much about.  I will venture this statement, that as far as I know there is no variety of native plum in which there is an intermingling of Hortulana or Chickasaw type that has proven productive enough to be generally profitable.