Some gardeners force early sweet corn by placing a handful of fine manure in each hill, stamping it down hard with the feet. Loose dirt is then kicked over it and sprouted seed planted—that is, seed that has been soaked in warm water until germination has really begun within it. This is a good method where the soil is moist so that the seeds may get a quick start, but it is no good in dry soil. The manure acts like an individual hot-bed for each hill of corn. Where this plan is used, thorough culture must be given, or the corn roots will remain in the manure during growing time and suffer from drought. Corn is not the only crop that is benefited by the use of the feet in planting. Wherever the soil must be compacted about the newly planted seed, the feet can be used to advantage. So true is this, that Peter Henderson, the well-known New York gardener and seedsman, wrote a pamphlet called “The Use of the Hands and Feet in Planting,” which is sent free upon application. It is well worth reading. When it first comes into the market, sweet corn usually brings 25 cents a dozen ears; that is the time for the wide-awake gardener to sell his crop. Later it may fall to five cents a dozen, and usually sells as low as 10 cents; there is no profit in that. If you pick the first ears as soon as they are well set, the second setting will be much better for it. (Very small, immature ears are fine cooked or raw, to eat, cob and all, but our people are not used to that.) It takes about a peck of corn to plant an acre in hills, and, if well attended to, the plants should yield from 8000 to 10,000 ears to the acre. The insects and diseases include wire-worms, cut-worms, chinch-bug and corn-stalk disease. Short rotation, including fall cultivation of the land, will check the wire-worms. See Cornell Bulletin 107. Treatment for cut-worms is fully described in Cornell Bulletin 104. Ditching, plowing and harrowing are bad for the chinch-bug and good for your corn. Read Ohio Bulletin 69, Kentucky Bulletin 74, and New York Report 15, pp. 531-533. It would be fruitless to take up your time with a discussion of corn-stalk disease here, when you can get it all by simply sending for Nebraska Bulletin 52. OKRA OR GUMBO. Although okra is really a Southern States perennial, it is cultivated as an annual, the seeds being sown every spring. It is grown for its pods, which are cut while still young and tender, and are much used for soups and stews. Of recent years the pods are also canned and dried for use in winter.