294 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES. 



cultivation should not wait until the plants appear. Mr. 

 S. J. Murdock, of Orange county, shows how skillfully 

 the hand wheel hoe can be used in the onion field. 



"After seeding, thorough, shallow cultivation is essen- 

 tial. Do not wait until the plants are up before begin- 

 ning ; from four to eight days will be proper, or when the 

 seed begins to show signs of germinating, which can be 

 ascertained by carefully brushing the soil from the drill 

 row. I put the curved hoes on my wheel hoe, with the 

 straight ends of the hoes pointing inwards and lapping 

 about two inches and hoe right over the rows but not 

 deep enough to disturb the seed. It saves a great amount 

 of hand-weeding by killing the weeds just starting to 

 grow in the rows. As soon as the onions are up suffici- 

 ently to follow the rows, I reverse my hoes, with the 

 curved ends next to the rows, just far enough apart so 

 as to hoe as close as possible without cutting the young 

 plants by running the hoes astride the rows. This op- 

 eration hoes both sides of the row at one trip of the ma- 

 chine. Follow this by hand-weeding; this operation is 

 best performed by the crawling process, that is, by get- 

 ting down on hands and knees astride of a row and pull- 

 ing every weed in sight, and loosening the soil around 

 and between the plants. Repeat this as often as any 

 weeds are to be found, and under no circumstances allow 

 the weeds to grow above the onions ; at the same time 

 keep the wheel hoe at work between the rows and as 

 close as possible." 



As previously said, the bulb of the onion should be at 

 the ground surface, and the dirt should not be thrown to 

 any extent on the onions by cultivation. The roots should 

 be well covered, but not the bulb. 



Transplanted Onions. Next to growth from the seed, 

 the transplanting of small seedlings from the seed-bed to 

 the field, is most practiced in California. This method has 

 recently been proclaimed in the Eastern and Southern 

 States as a "new onion culture," but it is really an old 

 practice in the south of Europe, and has been followed in 



