48 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1891. 



called " Boston Market." Too great care to get the very best of 

 seed cannot be used. 



Pricking Out the Plants. 



When the young plants have attained suflScient size to handle 

 easily — say when the leaves are an inch or so across — ^they should 

 be transplanted, or "pricked out" as it is termed, into another 

 frame of equally rich and equally finely pulverized soil, three 

 inches apart each way. This frame should be covered with glass 

 and, during the warmest part of sunny days, the ends of alternate 

 sash should be raised three or four inches to give air. 



If sufficiently lale in the season for the ground to freeze quite 

 hard nights and, particularly, if the ground remains frozen during 

 the day outside the frame, the frame should have bottom heat of 

 fermenting stable manure, showing a temperature of 120 or more 

 degrees, placed beneath six inches of the mellow, rich soil into 

 which the lettuce plants are to be set. This bottom heat should 

 be about 8 inches deep, evenly spread and gently pressed down, 

 and when covered the soil should come within two inches of the 

 glass on the south side of the bed. The north side of the frame 

 should be six inches higher than the south side. 



While this heat is fresh and active, say for the first two or 

 three weeks and particularly in mild weather, great care is essen- 

 tial to give it plenty of air during the day. At first it is some- 

 times needful to have some ventilation during the night, by 

 placing a lath flatwise beneath a sash once in twenty or thirty 

 feet. When the weather is cold enough to freeze hard nights 

 the sash are to be covered nights with straw mats, and these mats 

 also covered with broad shutters, later in the season, and particu- 

 larly when snow comes. These shutters and mats by day are 

 leaned back against the shelter fence, made of tight boards six 

 and a half or seven feet high, two and a half feet north of the 

 frame. 



Planting 6x6 Inches. 



When these plants are large enough to entirely cover the 

 ground, they are again transplanted into another frame filled 

 with fresh heat, a distance of 6 x 6 or 7 x 7 inches, which will give 

 a less number but larger heads. 



