GARDENING AND TRUCK FARMING. 291 



vegetables which we plant at this season, are Peas, Beets, Cab- 

 bages, Lettuce, Spinach, and Radishes. Mercury may go down 

 to fifteen degrees without damage to any of these, and I have 

 often had them planted when a week or more of severe winter 

 weather would come, with snow and frozen ground, and mercury 

 as low as eight degrees above zero, and no damage whatever be- 

 fall them. Sometimes, if the ground freezes hard after they 

 are up, the radishes will be killed, but all the others will 

 survive it. 



In planting crops which must be cultivated entirely by hand, 

 and especially those which come up small and delicate, like 

 onions, carrots, parsnips, etc., the greatest pains should be taken 

 to get the rows straight. Not only should they be planted by 

 line, but the row should be narrow. If a crooked drill three 

 inches wide is made to receive the seed, which is scattered the 

 full width, there will be three times the amount of hand weed- 

 ing required than if the seed is deposited in a straight drill less 

 than an inch in width. Judgment must be used also in deter- 

 mining the depth and manner of covering the seed. Most seeds 

 sown late in the season, after the hot weather has come, will 

 need to be covered two or three times as deep as those sown in 

 March or April. Walking on the row to press the soil to the 

 seed has been recommended in many agricultural books and 

 papers of late years, but whether this should be done or not de- 

 pends on the season, the variety of seed, and kind and condition 

 of soil. On a clay soil, early in the spring, if this was done 

 with some varieties of seed, they would never come up at all, 

 but later in the season it is often necessary to secure a stand. 



When it is desirable to press the soil lightly to the seed, the 

 best way is to draw a board over the row, and the pressure can 

 be regulated by weighting the board with earth or stones. In 

 hot weather when there is but little moisture in the soil, this 

 pressing of the earth to the seed will often insure a perfect 

 stand, when without it not half the seed would come up. 



If the garden contains so much clay as to be liable to run 

 together and pack after a heavy rain, it will pay to provide sand 

 to cover with. Delicate seeds, such as parsnip, carrot, and 



