Vegetable Growing for Market 91 



run lightly over the land, so as not to disturb the surface to a greater 

 depth than 2 in., will accomplish all that is needed in two or three appli- 

 cations. 



The last day of July or the first day of August is the time to sow ths 

 first season. Some growers commence sowing as soon as the middle of July 

 is passed. The result is that their plants want moving long before it is 

 time, or their land is ready, and when they are planted they are lean, 

 lanky specimens, with a poor chance of weathering the frosts and snows of a 

 hard winter. Unless, indeed, the soil of the seed bed is so poor that the 

 plants cannot grow, then the early sowing will have less to condemn it, and 

 the plants will be hard and woody. 



Experience proves, however, that though plants off moderately poor land 

 do better than those raised where richness has produced a soft, sappy 

 growth, yet plants that are too much stunted are like cattle starved when 

 young: they take a long while to come round. Another bad effect of 

 sowing too early is that many of the plants bolt in the spring, and though 

 the bolters can be pulled out and sold in the early weeks, the labour in- 

 volved and the poor price received together constitute a severe penalty to 

 pay for the early sowing. If the sowing is done broadcast, the seed should 

 be distributed evenly and not so thickly but that there will be space enough 

 for the plants to get to a decent size without drawing each other up. 

 This practice, perhaps on account of the added difficulty of hoeing, is going 

 out in many places in favour of drilling. Where this latter is the plan 

 followed, the drills should be fairly close together and the seed not too thick 

 in the rows. One sees sometimes a seed bed with the rows almost 1 ft. 

 apart and the plants in the rows almost as thick as mustard and cress. 

 What advantage there can be in such a method is difficult to see. Perhaps 

 the only reason the grower himself could give is that one which ought 

 surely soon to be heard less of in the agricultural world, viz.: " Because my 

 father did before me ". Not that any of us should condemn the practical 

 wisdom of our ancestors on the land. They managed in very many things 

 by the process of observation and the garnered store of experience, contri- 

 buted to by generation after generation to hit upon right methods, the 

 reasons for which scientific investigation and inductive reasoning are only 

 now discovering. What is to be condemned is the habit, so common, so 

 indolent, and so pestilent, of doing things simply because they have been 

 done before, without any independent enquiry for the why and the where- 

 fore of them. 



In a seed bed you want to raise the largest number of plants possible 

 in a given area. True: but if in trying to do this you make one-half so 

 drawn up as to be hardly worth planting, and the other half not worth 

 pulling, what have you gained? Your wiser plan manifestly is to have 

 your plants evenly distributed and not so thick anywhere but that they 

 will be short and squat, and thus start off with more than a sporting chance 

 that they will survive a stiff winter. The earliest pullings of plants are 

 generally planted 12 in. by 12 in. to come for spring greens. After this 



