SOWING AND CROPPING. 46 



earthed up ; tluit is to say, the hoe must be set to work be- 

 tween the rows, aud the loose earth drawn up to the stems of 

 the plants, forming a little bank next to their stalks, the 

 whole length of the row, and this should always be done in a 

 dry day. Peas and beans are also the better for this ; and we 

 may consider that, this fairly done, the spinach, turnips, car- 

 rots, onions thinned out, the beet-root well up, the stock-beds 

 not empty, and all things clean, the garden may be properly 

 called cropped ; not that we are to overlook that, once regular 

 in her productions, the garden will be as regular in her failures, 

 and the decline of a crop is as certain as its arrival at perfec- 

 tion. Sowing, pricking out, and transplanting, constitutes 

 the cropping of a kitchen-garden; but there are certain things 

 which, as we have liinted before, may be sown again and 

 again. Thus spinach, turnips, carrots, beans, peas, potatoes, 

 cabbages, lettuces, and salads generally, may be sown a score 

 times in a summer ; and successive crops of many things are 

 desirable ; but the work is the same ; the sowing, pricking 

 out, transplanting, which last is the same as pricking out, 

 only on a larger scale, are precisely the same for one season 

 as another. The distances of all the tribe, cabbage, cauli- 

 flower, brocoli, and savoy, two feet by eighteen inches will 

 always answer the purpose ; and there is no more difficulty 

 in doing this six times a summer than once. The winter 

 greens are, in fact, generally subservient to other crops ; till 

 they are gone ofi", the others cannot go in ; and when every- 

 tliing else suits, the weatlier is dry and parching, and therefore 

 they must wait for wet. 



But the mere vegetable portion of a garden is but little 

 towards the general stock. It has to be planted with the 

 usual bushes and trees, if it be a kitchen-garden ; with shrubs 

 and plants if it be a pleasure-garden ; and with flowers, if it 

 be intended for such a department at all. Yet we are not to 

 forget that flowers, and especially the whole race of perennials, 

 require precisely the same management as a common cabbage. 

 The sowing is the same ; the pricking out into store-beds, the 

 same ; the planting ultimately in the places where they are 

 to bloom and perfect themselves, all come to the same end, as 

 well as begin at the same beginning. The mere difference of 

 the size or growth of the plants is nothing. The sweet-pea in 

 the flower-garden wants the same attention as the eatable pea 

 of the kitchen -garden. The onlv difference between the flower 



