SOWING AND PLANTING OF VEGETABLES.
The significance of having good seeds has formerly been declared.
They must not only grow but grow into what we've bought them for-- be true to name.
Without the ultimate quality, we can not be sure of a good nursery, and without the former, they won't be fully grown.
A stingy" stand" from seeds duly sown is a rather exasperating and discouraging experience to encounter.
The cost of fertilizing and preparing the land is just as much, and the cost of cultivating veritably nearly as much, when the rows are full of frugal plants or threaded out with poor stems.
Whether you use ten cents' worth or ten bones ' worth, the stylish seed to be had will be the most provident to buy-- to say nothing of the satisfaction that full rows give.
And yet good seedsmen are more thoughtlessly and unjustly abused in the matter of seed vitality than in any other.
Inexperienced gardeners feel widely have the conviction that the only thing needed in seed sowing is to cover the seed with soil.
What kind of soil it is, or in what condition, or at what depth or temperature the seed is planted, are questions about which they don't trouble themselves to suppose.
Two conditions-- humidity and warmth-- are necessary to induce germination of seeds, no matter how full of life they may be; and different kinds have some choice as to the degree of each, especially of temperature.
This means of course that some firm must be used in planting, and when planting outside, where we can not regulate the temperature to our needs, we simply must regulate our seed sowing to its dictates, no matter how intolerant we may be.
To ensure the most stylish possible germination, and therefore stylish gardening, we must, first of all, also, settle the question of temperature when sowing out-of-doors.
For practical work, it serves to divide the garden vegetables into two groups.
WHEN TO SOW outside, Sow from the end of March to the morning of May, or when pearl and peach trees bloom, the following Beet Cabbage Carrot Cauliflower Celery Endive Kale Kohlrabi Lettuce Onions Parsley Parsnip Peas Radish Spinach Turnip Watercress Sow from the morning of May to the middle of June, or when apple trees bloom, the following sap Corn Cucumber Melon, musk Melon, water Okra Pumpkin Squash Tomato Getting the seed to sow, still, is only the first step in the game; they must be handled with the means of incontinently beginning to grow.
This means that they shouldn't be left to germinate in approximately packed soil, full of air spaces, ready to dry out on the first occasion and to let the bitsy seed roots be shriveled up and die.
The soil should touch the seed-- be pressed near about it on all sides so that the first bitsy valve root will issue incontinently into unanimous surroundings where it can incontinently take hold.
similar conditions can be set up only in a seed- bed fine but light enough to pack, nicely rich and sufficiently wettish, and where, in addition to this, the seed has been duly planted.
Styles OF PLANTING The seed- bed, as it's called, is the face prepared to admit the seed, whether for a patch of radishes or an acre of onions.
For crops to be sown directly where they're to go, the final medication of the bed should be made only incontinently previous to its use.
Having, also, good seeds on hand and the soil duly prepared to admit them, the only problem remaining is what way they shall be put in.
The different habits of growth specific to different vegetables make it patent at the onset that there must be different styles of planting, for veritably putatively a cabbage, which occupies but three or four square bases of space and stays in one place to make a head, will not bear the same treatment as a downtime squash, roving each over the garden and also escaping under the hedge to hide some of its stylish fruit in the altitudinous lawn outside.
The three systems of planting generally employed are known as" drills," " rows" and" hills."
I don't flash back ever seeing a description giving the exact distinctions between them; and in horticultural jotting, they feel to be used, to some extent at least, interchangeably.
As a rule " drills" relate to the growing of vegetables continuously in rows, similar to onions, carrots, or spinach." Rows" relate to the growing of vegetables at fixed distances piecemeal in rows similar to cabbage, or potatoes-- the civilization, except hand weeding and hoeing, being each done in one direction, as with drills."
Hills" relates to the growing of plants generally at equal distances, four bases or further piecemeal each way, with cultivating done in both directions, as with melons and squashes.
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