CHAP. VI.] PEA?. 137 



when it is thought worth while to incur the 

 expense, fresh green peas may be had at 

 Christmas. 



The main crop of early peas is sown in 

 February. A pint of small early peas will 

 sow twenty yards of drills ; each drill being 

 one inch and a half deep, and the drills two or 

 three feet asunder. The drills are marked out 

 by stretching a garden-line lengthwise along 

 the bed, and then making a drill or furrow 

 along it with a dibber : the earth is pressed 

 firm at the bottom of the drill by the very act 

 of making it, and the peas are then distributed 

 along; it, "two or three to every inch, or wider 

 apart, according: to their size, and covered with 

 soil, which is afterward* trodden down or rolled. 

 When attacks are apprehended from mice, 

 dried furze is generally strewed over the peas 

 as soon as they are put into the ground, and 

 before they are covered with earth ; and this is 

 efficacious, not only in protecting the peas from 

 their enemies, but in keeping; enough air about 

 them to allow them to vegetate. They should 

 then be well watered, and will require no fur- 

 ther care till they come up. When they are 

 two or three inches high, they should be hoed ; 

 that is, the weeds which may have grown 

 between the rows should be eradicated with 

 the hoe, and the earth drawn up to the roots 

 of the peas. When about six inches high, 

 they should be staked, with two rows of sticks 

 to each row of peas; the sticks being about a 

 foot higher than the average height of the peas, 

 and care being taken never to let them cross 

 each other at top. 



