The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1914-02-07
CHINESE IN GARDEN
Methods Which Have Brought
Large Financial Returns.
Two Crops a Year of First Quality
Tubers-Aas Abiding Faith In Hot
and Cold Water-How He
Raises Potatoes.

A Chinese market gardener of our
town who has grown rich at his BUSH
ness has some very unique methods.
but which are worth copying, for his
gardens, both artistically and financial
ly, are a great success, writes M. F.
Rittenhouse in the Rochester Herald.
He saves his squash and pumpkin
seeds for the next years planting by
the simple process of keeping the
squash or pumpkin that especially
strikes his fancy in a cool, dry place
until the next planting season. Then
he plants them with pieces of the
pulp adherfng, and they appear above
ground with mushroom like promt-
ness.
His muskmelon seeds he ties up. in
a bag of coarse burlap and covers this
loosely with rich soil, allowing the
seeds to sprout before planting them.
He also preserves his cucumber
seeds in the cucumber, which he coats
carefully with p~arafin as 500 as
pulled from the vine.
When he ~irrigates his potatoes (and
he raises two crops IN the same land
each year, he waters long and deeply;
and his potatoes never grow near
enough to the surface to get sun
burned, as do those of the inexperi-
enced gardeners who lightly sprinkle
the surface of their potato patch as
scantily and often as they sprinkle
their lettuce beds.
There is no question as to the SUI
%periority in size and quality of the
deep grown potato over those grown
close to the surface.
His beet seed are soaked in water
for at least forty-eight hours before
planting. He sets them to soak in
warm water and during the daytime
keeps the vessel containing them as
much in the sunshine as possible.
l have never yet seen him throw
away a young plant of any description.
He merely tr~ansplants them, and l do
not believe it an exaggeration to say
that nine-tenths of the plants survive
and flourish, for he is surely a past
master in the art-for it is an art-of
tra%nsplanting.
For example, when his lettuce plants
grow to about the height of two inch
es, he thins out the bed, and, clipping
off about an inch of the root tip of
each plant he pulls up, he replants in
long rows, and the transplanted let
tuce makes a more rapid and larger
growth han the plants which he has
left undisturbed.
The r~eplanted Cor rather transplant
ed) lettuce, with it's clipped roots,
urou-u IN crnb apnrroouc haodo that ~
a short distance they remind n OF
thrifty cabbage ows
He never uproots the head lettuce
he markets. Instead he leaves the
stalks in the ground and assiduously
waters and c~ultivates them, whereup-
on they produce another head. in about
half the time required for the first
head to reach a marketable size.
His beet plants are transplanted
with clipped roots in precisely the
same manner as the lettuce.
His onions, which are invariably
started from the seed Che refuses to
use sets), are transplanted after hav-
ing their roots clipped and grow to be
larger in circumference than the Or
binary saucer.
He also beheads his cabbage, leav-
ing the stalk to grow. He cuts slight
hicks or gashes in the growing stalk,
which. watered and tended, produces q
second growth that are in appearance
fair limitations of brussels sprouts and
quite as good to eat.
His faith in the forcing powers of
warm water is sublime. / have known
him to heat water for his radishes in
the chill days of spring, testing its
temperature as carefully as if prepar-
ing a baby's bath.
He is equally expert in roofing rose
cuttings. This he does during the en-
tire year, but he considers August the
most suspicious month, though | doubt
If he could give a reason for thinking
30.
For his cuttings he ties bits of Irvine
tightly about the branches Just below
where they form a "Y" with a smaller
branch growing from them. He allows
this Irvine to remain below the JOINT
for three weeks, then removes the cut
ting by severing 1t just below the
Irvine.
He plants his cuttings by thrusting
his spade nee deep in the soil. He
then slips the cutting in the opening.
draws out the spade, presses the earth
down firmly and the cutting is planted.
He plants his grapevine cuttings in
the same way.