In the Garden Many crops of spring cabbage have already
bolted, a total failure. The cause is too early sowing. August 15th is the key-date. Crops raised before that date will almost invariably fail ; September is early enough. There are varieties of summer cabbage which will, however, mature in a few weeks. Greyhound is one. Flea-beetle is almost bound to be troublesome on seedlings of the cabbage family, and on radishes. Dust with wood-ashes at dawn, or when leaves are wet. But fortunately the garden is not all cabbage and flea- beetle, and perhaps the most charming thing in it at the moment is a very dwarf almond. Delicate pink, only a foot high, it looks very like a paler Daphne mezereum. It came, nameless, from an old garden in the Midlands, is apparently on its own roots and spreads like an herbaceous perennial. Unfortunately a persistent search of the gardening-books has failed to reveal the name of this very delightful pygmy. Finally, many correspondents have written for fuller details of the method by which a reader extracted excellent cooking sugar from home-grown sugar-beet ; others have given details of how they use sugar-beet, and in one case parsnips, for jam-making. With the prospect of a reasonably good fruit croP these ideas are obviously very welcome, though a great part of the soft-fruit season will be over before the sugar-beet is fit. But it is naturally useless to grow sugar-beet without a working plan for extracting the sugar. I am, however, assured by my original correspondent that her plan is highly successful, and I am hoping to give the fullest practical details of it next week. H. E. RATES.
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