GAKDEN MAKING 141 



pricking out. The plants should be taken up with as many of 

 the roots as possible, and should not be allowed to become dry 

 by exposure to the sun and air. The holes in which they are 

 planted may be made with a pointed instrument of wood or 

 metal called a dibber. After the plants are placed in the holes 

 the dibber is again thrust into the ground an inch or more 

 from them and used to crowd the soil against them, thus mak- 

 ing it firm. If the weather is very dry, the plants should be 

 watered after setting, and protected from the wind and the 

 direct rays of the sun until again estab- 

 lished. Excessive transpiration may be 

 reduced or avoided by removing some of 

 the leaves or by cutting off part of each 

 leaf. The latter operation is called shearing. 

 Some growers are in the -habit of allowing 



cabbage and tomato plants to wilt before FlG - 102 - A sheared 



plant 

 resetting, with the idea that by so doing 



the plants will develop new roots instead of endeavoring to 

 revive the old ones. These species are quite tenacious of life 

 and survive much abuse. Frequently cabbage plants for 

 transplanting are simply pulled up from the seed bed. 



Inducing plants to fruit. It is natural that all mature peren- 

 nial plants should flower and fruit annually, but it is a well- 

 known fact that many do not do so. Fruiting is a very 

 exhausting process. Annuals are killed outright by it, while 

 in perennials a heavy crop of fruit may so depress the vitality 

 of the plant as to make it impossible for it to bear at all the 

 following season. When a plant sets more fruits than it should 

 bear, some of them should be removed. On the other hand, in 

 all plants in which great development of the vegetative parts 

 is desired, it is customary to remove all the flowering shoots 

 and fruits as soon as they appear. Thus we pick off the berries 

 of asparagus and pinch out the flower stalks of rhubarb. 

 Annuals may be made to take on a perennial character by 



