them down and covering with dirt. ample supply for the average family Some Good Varieties. Do not cover with straw or stalks, for the year round. the as which The varieties which I would recom- Blackberries: Eldorado and An- Grape. Gooseberries: Downing. Houghton and Grapes: Moore's Early, Delaware and Niagara. A good sized fruit garden for the average farmer is about a quarter of an acre. The plants to set this out should not cost over $15.00 and possibly can be bought for less money. This fruit garden if properly taken care of will produce between 40 and 50 bushels of fruit when plants are in their prime, and I consider this an the manure you apply must be pretty DISCUSSION. Mr. Matteson-I understand that UorM well rotted. Now in applying a Supt. McKerrow-Would Mr. Con heavy coat of that, are you not likely vey's family be a fair sample, 14? to be troubled with the large white grub in your strawberries? Mr. Herbst-Well, I prefer the well rotted manure to use for fruit garden, the plants get the benefit of it much more quickly than if it is put on fresh. Mr. Herbst-I think that sized fruit garden would supply even Mr. Convey's family. Mr. Convey-I object to the reporter taking down anything that is not facts. My family is large in number, but small in size. Mr. Matteson-In your list of rasp- Mr. Whiffin-I have often noticed berries, you did not mention the it is much easier to recommend Older raspberry. Did you ever use things at Institutes than it is to folthat? row the recommendations. It would take just about half the time of one man at present high prices to take care of that garden and I think it is for rather large for the average farmer. Mr. Herbst-Yes; I believe the Conrath is better; it has a larger berry and a little better flavor. Mr. Matteson-Is it as hardy cold dry weather as the Older? Mr. Herbst-I cannot see where you can put in so much time on a quarter of an acre, if it is planted in rows. A good deal of this work can be done with the horse cultivator, and that cultivation doesn't amount to but very little. It can be done whenever you are out cultivating your potatoes and corn. But very little hoeing is necessary, about all that is necessary is to keep it free from weeds, well cultivated. Mr. Scott-Mr. Herbst is right. and very likely in Mr. Scott's locali- We have laid out our garden so we ty or in Mr. Matteson's locality the can cultivate nearly everything beOlder would do better than the Con- fore going out in the corn field or rath. They are both good varieties. the potato field, we take perhaps Mr. Matteson-I wasn't saying any- half an hour and run through the thing against the varieties recom garden, reducing the amount of hoemended but I do wish to speak paring to the minimum, and it is time ticularly in favor af the Older as an well expended. Now, about our bush early variety, and with us a very fine market berry. fruit. I would advise planting that eight feet apart in A Member-Why do you not recommend the Warfield? Mr. Herbst-Because it is a pis farmer's family throughout the state. tillate variety and you have to plant something with it, the Dunlap or the | across and break every plant, thin Lovette, I would recommend. A Member-Do you know anything about the McKinley? them down. Mr. Matteson-Warfields are very liable to be too thick, to grow too Mr. Herbst-The McKinley has not many plants. been tested enough to know. Mr. Eastman-In our country we A Member-Will you get more ber- have got to have the Warfield. The ries by hill culture? Mr. Herbst-I wouldn't plant by hill culture. There is a little more work on that and on the farm we want to get all the berries we can with the least work. You will get better berries by hill culture, and they will be liable to be a little larger, but on account of the extra work I do not want to advise the farmer to grow them that way. Mr. Matteson-How wide would you have these matted rows? Mr. Herbst-Not over 16 or 18 inches wide. Some varieties being very strong, the plants will stand in the row very thick, and if the row is too wide and too thick and it happens to come a little dry weather, there is not enough moisture there to mature the crop, so I would not advise too wide a row. gentleman spoke about his raspberries getting too high. Why not take off the tops about 18 inches high? The gentleman also spoke about putting straw around them. If we did that, the mice would eat them all up. Mr. Herbst-When you set your plants out in the fall, there is no growth for the mice to disturb. Only that little stub sticks up above the ground of the blackberry cane and the berries will not send out any growth or mature any till the next year. My idea of putting coarse manure on top of that plant was to keep it from heaving out in the spring. That stub is dead in the spring. Mr. Scott-I advise this gentleman to get some cats. I was going to commend Mr. Matteson for reducing the width of his rows of strawberries. I believe he will get more strawberries. We do this by using running cutters, they are really rolling coulters. Another method is to take a hoe and stop all further run Mr. Matteson-The soil I grow fruit on is different from yours; that might have something to do with the width of the row. I used to grow them 16 or 18 inches wide, but I have narrowed them down to eight | ning. or 10 inches wide. Mr. Herbst-The heavier your soil, the more plants you can leave in the row. Mr. Matteson-But if it comes on a dry season with the heavy clay soil that we have, it is not as liable to mature the fruit in the center of the row. Mr. Eastman-I want a row 30 inches wide; I am doing business for money, not for the farm. Of course, I handle them according to the plants, sometimes I find them getting a little too thick, then I go Mr. Matteson-The gentleman speaks of mice troubling his raspberries. Do you follow cultivation? Mr. Eastman-Yes. Mr. Matteson-I do not see why you should have trouble with the mice then; we have no trouble at all with that method. Mr. Eastman-I would like to know why Mr. Scott wants his strawberries in such narrow rows? Mr. Scott-I think it is a recognized fact that the plants to do their best should be about 15 inches apart, not less than that. As a mat ter of fact, we have our rows on the Mr. Herbst-We shipped about average 14 inches in width, and from 250,000 cases of berries during the center to center three and a half feet apart. season, very fine, large strawberries, and the price ranged from $1.00 to $1.65; the average was about $1.10. It has been an unusually good year for high prices. 4 Mr. Eastman-Yes, it has been the best year we have ever had. A house in Milwaukee offered me $1.45 for what berries I had, and that pays very well. WHAT A WOMAN CAN DO WITH BEES. I wish I had the power and the eloquence to persuade all farmers wives to keep a few colonies of bees. They require very little care and give one large returns for the money and time invested. Starting In. If you are contemplating buying a few colonies, buy of some reliable man a good, heavy colony. Do not think it exorbitant if he asks you double the price in the spring that he offered them to you for the fall before, as a good, strong, wintered over colony is a valuable thing. Learn to handle them. As knowledge is gained, the apiary can be enlarged to profitable size. Do not buy bees in old boxes or home-made hives, but buy them in good Langstroth hives, with about nine or 10 frames to the hive, that can be easily lifted out and examined. The Make-up of a Colony. In each hive there should be three kinds of bees, the queen, of which there should be only one, the drones or male bee, of which you need only Langstroth hive with two half-depth supers for surplus honey. a few, and the worker or neuter, of which you cannot have too many. The sex of the bee is determined you by the kind of comb have in the hive. Be sure to have nothing We until set them back in the cellar but worker comb. In the worker | back, but if we do not set them out comb, each cell should be about the early, the bees get restless, and they size of the ordinary comb honey soil the hive and the comb and cells. In these, beginning in the early diarrhoeal difficulties ensue. spring, the queen lays an egg, the workers put in some pollen for food, seal them and then they set on them to keep them warm, just as a hen does on a nest of eggs. You take out a frame, hold it so the cold air strikes it and see how they will flat ten their bodies and cling to the card to protect the brood. The drone comb has much coarser cells and if you find you have any frames to it, cut it out and put in a sheet of the artificial comb foundation, as the drones are a great drain on the workers; they are obliged to Put a little salt where they can have access to it, and have a shallow dish of water with a few shavings in it, so they will not to go to the watering tank for it. Always set your hives facing the east, so the bees can get the early morning sun and thus get them out early in the morning. Put chip dirt around the hive, so the grass cannot grow through. I always put a heavy chalk mark around the stand to keep feed them and they have no protec- the ants away, as they cannot cross tion against them. Late in the fall it. the workers will kill off the drones, The first warm, quiet day I open leaving only a few to winter over, the hive, scrape out all the dead bees but it is nothing but carelessness on and mold, find the queen and clip your part allowing them to be there. her wings, put on one or two sets of Then there are the queen cells; supers, then lay on an oilcloth with you find them at swarming time. They painted side down to keep the bees are about the size and shape of a from crawling into the top of the small peanut and from three to seven hive. Now they require no more atin number. tention until swarming time. Swarming. Method to Pursue in the Spring. We always winter our bees in an When they swarm, I take my queen outside cellar, the ordinary family trap, pick her up as she crawls cellar is not suitable. In the spring from the hive (it is the old queen and we set our bees out on the stands the young bees that leave), set the as soon as the days are warm enough, old hive off from the stand, throw a that they may take their cleans- blanket over it, set a new hive on, ing flight. We may lose a few and by that time the bees, finding that will chill before they get the queen iş not with them, |