186 TRUCK-FARMING AT THE SOUTH. 



the grass seed. The onion is a gross feeder, and, with- 

 out adequate manuring, there will be no satisfactory 

 crop. The plants will not form bulbs properly if poorly 

 fed. The yield will be in proportion to the quantity and 

 quality of the manure. Thirty loads, of thirty bushels 

 each, sufficiently compressed, or fermented, to weigh forty 

 pounds to the bushel, is not a heavy application. Twenty- 

 five loads of night-soil would do as well. If other fertil- 

 izers, such as bone-meal (which is excellent), or guano, are 

 used, they should be harrowed in so as to permit the 

 roots of the young plants to reach them. A top-dress- 

 ing of a hundred bushels of ashes per acre is beneficial. 



After several years of manuring with stable manure, a 

 change to a half ton of bone-flour, ammoniated super- 

 phosphate, guano, or five hundred pounds of sulphate of 

 ammonia would be advisable. If the land is new, or 

 loamy, a cross plowing and double harrowing may be 

 necessary to put it in proper trim to receive the manure. 

 It should be level, lest heavy rains may wash out the 

 seed on the higher points, and cover the plants in lower 

 ones too deeply. At the South, where we are visited by 

 heavy rains, onions, on a small scale, are best planted on 

 four-feet-wide " lazy beds," the intervening paths acting 

 as auxiliary drains. The seed may be sown upon these beds 

 by hand, in drills half an inch deep, twelve inches apart, 

 across the bed. On a larger scale,where machines must be 

 used, making two drills at a time, the sowing had better 

 be done on narrow lands, fifteen or twenty feet wide, the 

 rows running lengthwise, twelve or fifteen inches apart. 

 Beds, or narrow lands, are formed in plowing under the 

 manure, previously applied broadcast, as shallow as pos- 

 sible, and, if the furrows intervening between the lands 

 are too shallow to act as drains, the loose soil is to be 

 thrown out upon the beds with hoes or shovels. The 

 surface must be thoroughly fined with harrow and hand- 

 rake. In fair weather, the seed will be up in two weeks. 



