CHAPTER III 



A Difficulty Easily Overcome 



HOW THE PLANTS ARE SET IN THE GROUND 



To transplant a few hundred onion plants is not a 

 formidable task, but when you set 120,000, covering an 

 acre, you have a big 1 job on hand, and no mistake. 

 Indeed it is the work connected with my new onion 

 culture ; all the rest of it is easy mere child's play, I 

 might say. 



It takes about 120,000 plants to set an acre of 

 onions. I can get boys, that, with some practice, will 

 set 2000 to 3000 plants a day, and nimble-fingered per- 

 sons, used to garden work, will easily set 4000 or 5000. 

 The job of planting an acre is therefore equivalent to 

 probably not less than twenty-five days' work, and in 

 some cases this estimate may be considerably exceeded ; 

 but the amount of thirty dollars should certainly be 

 enough to pay for the whole job, when we pay boys 

 fifty cents, and more experienced persons one dollar or 

 one dollar and a quarter for a good day's work. 



Transplanting so many onions may be a costly 

 operation, but it relieves us of much, if not all, hand 

 weeding, and entirely of the job of thinning. Old 

 onion growers know something about the tediousness 

 and costliness of these operations. The saving, in 

 these respects, more than pays for the labor of trans- 

 planting. 



"How far apart shall I set the plants?" That is 

 the next thing the novice wants to know. I have for 

 years made the rows an even foot apart, and crowded 



