From the okra is made the famous gumbo soup, which ever calls to vision a colored aunty presiding over the mysteries of a Southern dinner.  If Aunt Dinah, so well known to us from the pages of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” could have left her receipt for this compound, her fame might have lasted as long as that of Mrs. Stowe.  The vegetable furnishing this glutinous, nutritious, and wholesome ingredient is as easily raised as any product of the garden.  We have only to sow the seed, from the first to the tenth of May, two inches deep, and let the plants stand from two to three feet apart each way, in order to have an abundant supply.  The new Dwarf Prolific is about the best variety.

Fall turnips are so easily grown that they require but few words.  They are valuable vegetables for utilizing space in the garden after early crops, as peas, beans, potatoes, etc., are removed.  The seed of ruta-baga, or Swedish turnips, should be planted earliest—­from the twentieth of June to the tenth of July in our latitude.  This turnip should be sown in drills two feet apart, and the plants thinned to eight inches from one another.  It is very hardy, and the roots are close-grained, solid, and equally good for the table and the family cow.  The Yellow Aberdeen is another excellent variety, which may be sown early in July, and treated much the same as the foregoing.  The Yellow Stone can be sown on good ground until the fifteenth of July in any good garden soil, and the plants thinned to six inches apart.  It is perhaps the most satisfactory of all the turnip tribe both for table use and stock.  The Bed-top Strap-leaf may be sown anywhere until the tenth of August.  It is a general custom, in the middle of July, to scatter some seed of this hardy variety among the corn:  hoe it in lightly, and there is usually a good crop.  Every vacant spot may be utilized by incurring only the slight cost of the seed and the sowing.  It may be well, perhaps, to remember the advice of the old farmer to his son.  He said, “Stub your toe and spill half the seed before sowing it; for scattered broadcast it is usually much too thick.”  If this proves true, thin out the plants rigorously.  This turnip is good for table and stock as long as it is solid and crisp; but it grows pithy toward spring.  There are other kinds well worth a trial.

Perhaps no vegetable is more generally appreciated than celery.  Like asparagus, it was once, and is still by some, regarded as a luxury requiring too much skill and labor for the ordinary gardener.  This is a mistake.  Few vegetables in my garden repay so amply the cost of production.  One can raise turnips as a fall crop much easier, it is true; but turnips are not celery, any more than brass is gold.  Think of enjoying this delicious vegetable daily from October till April!  When cooked, and served on toast with drawn butter sauce, it is quite ambrosial.  In every garden evolved beyond the cabbage and potato phase a goodly space of the best