VINE OR CUCURBITOUS CROPS. “Cucurbitous” is a fine large word, but you don’t need to learn it. All vine crops are annuals and are tender to frost, although all do not need a hot-bed start. They are warm-season crops, and in the Northern States most of them need a quick start so that they can ripen before the summer is past. Well-prepared soil and a sunny exposure are desirable. They transplant with such difficulty that they are usually sown where they are to grow, but if not, it is best to start them on sods turned upside down, or in pots or boxes. They are always a main crop and are planted in hills. There is very little difference in the cultivation of any of them, and if you know how and where to grow one, you will generally do well with the rest. Where you fail, you may usually lay it to the fact that your soil was not in condition to give the young plants a good hold and to get a quick start. If your soil is well prepared, well drained and properly fertilized, you will have little trouble, unless it may be from pests. The way to fight those is to sow seed freely, and be content to lose the greater part of your possible crop. Some growers who make a specialty of melons or cucumbers, plant squash and pumpkin seed very early in the field that the young plants may attract the striped beetle and give the farmers the opportunity to kill the pest before the real crops are taken from the frames. That is a method of deceiving the creatures, but the end justifies the means. Unless you live where the climate is cold and the season short, you may plant squash, pumpkin and cucumber in the open fields where they are to grow. Otherwise start them in frames, as muskmelons are started. The land should be given the best of surface tillage, and every effort should be made to start the plants so well that the fruits will have set before midsummer. All these vine plants need much moisture in the soil and if the preparation-tillage be neglected, no amount of after-tillage can make up for the first loss. Watch the vines carefully so as to prevent one fruit setting much in advance of the others. It is better to pick the first one off if it is much ahead of the main crop. Otherwise there will be no uniformity of size or quality. If your plants run too much to vine, pinch off the shoots and let the vigor go to fruit-making. These crops often succeed as early crop and main-season crop, by starting one about two weeks after the other. Spade up the ground loosely for a space of a square foot or two, and mix light, loose earth or barnyard scrapings with it to make the hill. It is well to add a handful of fertilizer to the earth; but if it seems cold and hard, remove it altogether and replace it by light, warm soil. Of course in the warm, light soils of the South this is not necessary. CUCUMBER AND GHERKIN.