STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 49 
AS ‘the earliness of vegetables has much to do with the satisfaction ot 
growing them, it is of prime importance that you have a hot-bed in which 
to grow early plants of cabbage, cauliflower, tomato, and egg plant. 
Onions, beats, parsnips, lettuce, peas, radish, and spinach cannot be 
planted too soon after the ground settles in the spring. 
Corn, beans, carrots, cucumbers, melons, and squashes after the ground 
begins to get warm. 
Experiment a little with early planted sweet corn. It is usually planted 
later than need be. 
With all this array of culinary vegetables the acre is not yet planted, and 
you will have plenty of space for Phinney’s early and mountain sweet water- 
melon, green nutmeg, and white Japan muskmelon. These last are the best. 
of their kind for this latitude. You can still find space for any vegetable 
novelty, or anything on this list not mentioned, that you may happen to 
fancy. 
Everything is in rows and under flat culture—that is, we do not raise hills 
or ridges for anything. 
Corn, cabbages, cauliflower, and peas are in rows three feet apart, and at 
a distance apart in the rows to accommodate the sorts. Beans two feet by 
one; tomatoes four feet apart each way; beets in rows eighteen inches 
apart; carrots, salsify, and onions sixteen inches, and always better a little 
too thinly than too thickly in the row. 
Plant all small seeds with a planet drill, and cultivate with a wheel hoe, 
when the plants are small, and with a horse whenever and wherever it can 
be done without injury to the plants. 
This seems like a big garden, but if corn, cabbages, potatoes, peas, 
squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes are all cultivated with a horse, and you 
have a wheel-hoe to work closely planted rows, and the weeds are kept out 
from the beginning, you will be surprised at the little labor required to 
grow so much valuable product. 
The model American farmer will be the one who tries to make his country 
home a pleasant one, who cultivates his fields well and cares for his flocks 
and herds, and who cares as well for his family, who, by surrounding his 
home with gardens of fruits and flowers, compels the gratitude of his 
dependents and the respect of his neighbors. 
In my travels about the country I have been impressed with the cheerless 
aspect of the country homes, as in comparison with what they might be. 
Not a single natural attribute to attract or please. 
A scraggy, unshaven face of Nature, perverted rather than beautified by 
its inhabitants. These men, Christians though they may profess to be, are 
false to nature’s God. No man has a right to distort his surroundings to 
correspond with his nature. 
Study to make your farms the fit abiding place for the fairest and bright- 
est in the land, and then you will find them there. 
Then the country and the city—strength and culture—agriculture and 
horticulture, will go hand in hand, The billowy wheat, the waving corn, 
the flowers and fruits of our new Northern home, in harmonious blending 
will show nature’s law—that man and nature are made each for one another. 
