Karen House, age 9, of Winston Salem, North Carolina, for her question:

Where and how do cranberries grow?

Anybody can buy a box of cranberries in the supermarket. They look like glassy red beads    and turn out to be little round fruits. Their poppable skins and juicy stuffings have a sharp taste that wakes you up with a jerk. Some people like that tangy flavor. But most of us would rather tone it down with a trace of honey or sugar. We like a little sweetness in our cranberry sauces, juices and jellies.

Cranberries and roast turkey bring out the best in each other. It so happens that they arrive at the market together, just when we need them for Thanksgiving. We know that the turkey rancher plans to have his birds ready just at the right time. But where the cranberries come from and how they arrive at the right time is more mysterious.

This is because cranberries do not grow in everybody's backyard. Actually, they come from very fussy little bushes growing in only a very few parts of North America. What's more, they need a lot of tender care, or they won't grow at all. They like the weather to be just so and refuse to put up with very hot summers and very cold winters. They like to grow by the ocean or near a large lake    because the water keeps their air nicely moist. Cranberry bushes like to grow in low, flat places    with their roots in soggy soil.

There are not many places that suit them just so. But cranberries grow happily in the marshy regions of New Jersey. Others grow in parts of Cape Cod, Wisconsin and Nova Scotia. The cranberries of the Far West flourish in boggy marshes near the shores of Washington and Oregon. These places have cranberry weather and cranberry soil. But a lot more is needed to make those little bushes put on their luscious red berries.

The farmer must watch and tend his bushes summer and winter. He plants them in peat type soil, slightly on the acid side. On top. of this he spreads a layer of clean sand, about three inches thick. Between the rows of low, spreading bushes he digs ditches to hold floods of water. In winter, the bushes are flooded to protect them from frost. In summer they may be flooded and drained several times to drown the bugs that devour their tasty leaves.

In the summer, they bear blossoms that look like pretty little lilies. The first berries may be ready in September    and the main harvest is ready in plenty of time to arrive with the Thanksgiving turkey.

Suppose you find just the right spot to grow your own. Your field of new plants will sprout from twigs taken from healthy older bushes. Just poke them into the right soil. Watch and tend them, flood and drain them for their first four fruitless years.. After that, keep up the good work and your cranberry bushes will give you bright red harvests for the next 60 years.