AMERICAN GARDENER. 14f 



When cucumbers are left eight or ten plants in a 

 hill, they never shoot strongly. Their vines are 

 poor and weak. The leaves become yellow : and 

 if they bear, at all, it is poor tasteless fruit that 

 they produce. Their bearing is over in a few 

 weeks. Whereas, a single plant, in the same 

 space will send its fine green vines all around it to 

 a great distance, and, if no fruit be left to rifien> 

 will keep bearing till the white frosts come in the 

 fall. The roots of a cucumber will go ten feet, 

 in fine earth, in every direction. Judge, then, 

 how ten plants, standing close to one another, 

 must produce mutual starvation ! If you save a 

 cucumber for seed, let it be the first fine fruit 

 that appears OH the plant. The plant will cease 

 to bear much after this fruit becomes yellowish. 

 I have said enough, under the head of Saving 

 Seeds (Paragraphs, 139 to 146) to make you take 

 care, that nothing of the melon, pumpkin or 

 squash kind grow near a seed-bearing cucumber 

 plant ; and that all cucumbers of a different sort 

 from that bearing the seed be kept at a great dis- 

 tance. There are many sorts of cucumbers ; the 

 Long Prick ly, the Short Prickly^ the Cluster , 

 and many others ; but, the propagation and cul- 

 tivation of all the sorts are the same. 



218. DANDELION. This is a well-known 

 and most wicked garden weed, in this country as 

 well as in England ; and I am half afraid to speak 

 of using it as food, lest I should encourage lazi- 

 ness. But, there may be people without gardens, 

 and without the means of purchasing greens in 

 the spring ; and to them what I am about to say 

 may be of use. The Dandelion is as early as the 

 earliest of grass ; and, it is one of the very best 



