THE OPENING YEAR 



only just moist enough to prevent the plants from flag- Jan. 

 ging. A soppy soil and a close atmosphere will bowl 16-31 

 them over like ninepins. Setting out a few inches apart 

 in other boxes when they begin to crowd each other, 

 and planting out-of-doors in rich soil any time that there 

 is fine weather after the middle of April, will do the rest. 

 The First Crop of Cucumbers. — Neither the reputed 

 indigestibility of the Cucumber, nor the triumphant 

 establishment by food specialists of the fact that its 

 nourishing properties are negligible, prevents people 

 from hankering after a home-grown crop. It is all very 

 well to compare its proportion of proteids with that con- 

 tained in a basin of gruel, but just give the average 

 human being a choice between the two, and see what 

 happens. I think most people like to talk about proteids, 

 and to keep as far away from them as possible in practice. 

 But if you want to excel in the playing courts proteid 

 food will certainly be superior to Cucumbers. As a 

 student of food reform, I feel impelled to say this ; but as 

 a horticultural writer I have to take things as they are, 

 and show how Cucumbers can be grown. First, order 

 a packet of seed, and prepare a sufficient number of 

 small pots by putting a crock in the bottom and half- 

 filling them with loamy soil. Lay a seed in the centre of 

 each pot, and provide a temperature of 60° to 65° in the 

 form of moist bottom heat, such as that of a damp 

 cocoa-nut fibre bed over hot-water pipes. When the 

 seedlings grow, take them out of the bed and add a little 

 more soil. But keep the plants in a warm, moist house 

 always. Cucumbers love humid heat — in fact, they are 

 a Turkish bath type of plant. They will probably be 

 ready to plant in about three weeks, and may then be set 

 out about two feet apart in small mounds of lumpy soil 

 made up on slates on the stage of the house. The tips 

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