Daddy Takes Us to the Garden Part 10

Uncle Pennywait had smoothed off a nice bit of his garden where, as yet, he had planted nothing, and into the long earth-rows of this he now began to plant his potato seed. He walked along the rows with a bag of the cut-up pieces hung around his neck, and as he dropped in the white chunks he covered them with dirt by using a hoe.

"When my potatoes grow up into nice green vines, and the striped bugs come to have a feast on them, you may help me drive the bad creatures away,"

said Uncle Pennywait to the children. "In fact some of my early potatoes need looking after now."

"Are there bugs on them?" asked Mab, when her uncle had finished his planting.

"Indeed there are! Come and I'll show you."

Over they went to the early-potato part of Uncle Pennywait's garden.

There, on many of the green vines, were a lot of blackish and yellowish bugs, crawling and eating the leaves.

"We'll just give them a dinner of Paris Green," said Uncle Pennywait, "and they won't eat any more of my vines."

"What's Paris Green?" asked Mab.

"It is a deadly poison, for grown folks or children as well as bugs, and you must never touch it, or handle it, unless I am with you, or your father is near," said Uncle Pennywait. "Here is some of it."

He showed the children a bright, green powder, some of which he stirred into a sprinkling pot full of water. This water he sprayed over the potato vines.

"The poison in the water goes on the potato leaves," explained Uncle Pennywait, "and when the bugs eat the leaves they also eat the poison, and die. We have to kill them or they would eat away the leaves of the vines until they all died, and we would have no potatoes. The potato bugs are very harmful, and we must get rid of them."

Then he let Hal and Mab sprinkle the potato vines with the Paris Green, afterward making the children carefully wash their hands so there would be no danger.

"Is that the only way to drive away the potato bugs?" asked Hal.

"Sometimes farmers go through their potato field and knock the bugs from the vines into a can full of kerosene oil," said Uncle Pennywait, "or they may use another poison instead of Paris Green. But the bugs must be killed if we are to have potatoes."

Just then Mab saw Aunt Lolly going into her garden with a bottle in her hand.

"Are you going to poison bugs too?" asked the little girl.

"No, I am going to make a cuc.u.mber grow inside this," was the answer.

"Make a cuc.u.mber grow in a bottle?" exclaimed Hal. "Why, how funny!"

"Let's go see!" cried Mab, and together they ran over to Aunt Lolly's garden.

CHAPTER VI

THE CORN SILK

"Maybe this is another joke, like the eyes of the potatoes," said Hal to his sister, as they ran along.

"That wasn't a joke--the eyes were REAL, though they couldn't see nor blink at you," Mab answered.

"The potato eyes must see a little, else how could they find their way to grow up out of the dark ground?" Hal wanted to know.

"Well, my beans didn't have any eyes, and they grew up," Mab answered.

"Even if they did grow upside down, or I thought they did," and she laughed. "But let's see what Aunt Lolly is doing."

Uncle Pennywait's wife was out among the cuc.u.mber vines now. She had planted them about the same time Hal had put in the five kernels of corn in each hill.

Aunt Lolly's cuc.u.mber seeds had also been planted in hills, so there would be a raised mound of earth for the roots to keep moist in, and in order that the vines, at the start, would be raised up from the other ground around them. Now the cuc.u.mber plants were quite lengthy, running along over their part of the garden, and in some places there were growing tiny little pickles--or they would be pickles, when put in salt, vinegar and spices.

"Are you really going to make a cuc.u.mber grow in a bottle?" asked Mab as she saw her aunt, with a bottle in her hand, stooping over one of the vines.

"I really am," was the answer. "It is only a little trick, though, and really does no good. But I thought you children would like to see it."

"How are you going to do it?" asked Hal.

"You see this little cuc.u.mber, or pickle," spoke Aunt Lolly, and she showed one to Hal and Mab. "Well now I'm going to slip it inside this bottle, but not pull the pickle from the vine. If I did that the cuc.u.mber would stop growing and die."

She had a bottle with a neck large enough so the pickle would go in it.

The bottle was an odd shape.

"The pickle will grow large and completely fill the bottle," went on Aunt Lolly. "It will grow because it is not broken off the stem, and the bottle, being gla.s.s, will let in the sunshine. The neck is also large enough so air can get in, for without air, sunlight and the food it gets through the stem the pickle would not live.

"But as it grows it will swell and fill every part of the bottle and it also will grow just to the shape of the bottle, so that in the Fall, when it can't grow any more, because of the strong gla.s.s, I can break the bottle and I will have a pickle shaped just like it, curves, queer twists and everything else."

"Oh, how funny!" cried Hal "I wonder if I could grow an ear of corn in a bottle?"

"No," answered his aunt. "An ear of corn has to grow inside the husk, and you could not, very well, put a bottle over that."

"Could I over one of my beans?" asked Mab.

"Well, you might, but it would have to be a very long and thin bottle, for a bean is that shape when it has grown as large as it will ever get. So I don't believe I'd try it, if I were you. Ill let you each have one of my pickles to grow inside a bottle."

Hal and Mab thought this would be fun so they found other bottles with which to do the funny trick of making cuc.u.mbers grow inside the gla.s.s.

"I wish Daddy would give a prize for the funniest shaped cuc.u.mber," said Mab, when she had fixed her bottle with a pickle inside it.

"Maybe he will," spoke her brother. "We'll ask him."

But when Daddy Blake came home that evening he had a package in his arms, and the children were so interested about what might be in it that they forgot to ask for the cuc.u.mber prize.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Mab.

"I'm going to take you and Hal down to the garden and show you how to set out cabbage plants," said Daddy Blake.

"But we've got some cabbage plants!" cried Hal.

"Yes, I know. But these are a kind that will get a head, or be riper, later in the Fall. This is Winter cabbage that we will keep down cellar, and have to eat when there is snow on the ground, for cabbage is very good and healthful. We can eat it raw, or made into sauer-kraut or have it boiled with potatoes. We must save some cabbage for Winter and that is the kind I am going to plant now."

"And may we help?" asked Mab.