May or June is the best season for this planting, for then plants are large enough to transplant into beds in July, and will be well established before the forcing season.
For a small home supply through the winter, half-barrels or wash-tubs may be used. Half fill them with sandy soil and stand in a light, warm cellar. Set slips four inches apart in August, and keep perpetually moist. If you have no means of getting slips, buy seed from any good seedsman. Start in shallow pans in June.
I saw an item in a paper, not long ago, which estimated that an acre of watercress, at its present market prices, would bring from four to five hundred dollars a year.
Watercress should be carefully prepared for market. Gather and bunch at once, to prevent unnecessary handling. Cut the stalks evenly after the bunches are tied up, and pack in light crates lined with hay or moss. Place bunches closely together in rows, with hay or moss between layers. Ship on late trains if they have to go by express, to avoid exposure to the heat of the sun during transit. When small quantities are going to private customers, pack in strawberry or grape boxes, as there is less likelihood of the cress heating and spoiling when packed in this way.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH BEES
The old-fashioned hive was so inconvenient and wasteful that many people who date their knowledge of bee-keeping from the old homestead will find it difficult to believe that apiculture has developed into a practical, money-making industry during the last twenty years, until now the average amount of honey put on the market each year is upward of a hundred million pounds, representing a money value of from eight to ten million dollars.
In a favourable locality one hive, with its average colony of thirty-five thousand workers and a queen, will turn out from thirty to forty pounds, besides the fifteen or twenty necessary to feed the hive through the winter.
The vicious temper of the old-time black bee has much to do with the neglect of this profitable industry. The Italian bees are, however, so much better as honey-gatherers that they are almost universally kept now, and are so gentle in disposition that even a nervous person can easily learn to manipulate them without fear of stings.
The principal honey-producing plants in our Eastern states are fruit bloom of all kinds, locust, white clover, crimson clover, basswood, sumac, goldenrod, buckwheat, sunflowers, grapes and asters. Of these, clover, basswood and buckwheat provide the bulk of our honey crop in most localities, although large yields are often obtained from others. Fruit bloom, though yielding much honey, comes so early in the season that it is mostly consumed by the bees in brood-rearing. Clover commences the last of May, lasts several weeks, and yields a light-coloured honey of fine flavour. Basswood blooms the first part of July, lasts about ten days, and produces a very white honey. Buckwheat blooms in August and the first part of September. It gives a dark-red honey with a strong flavour.