EXPERIENCE OF PRACTICAL GROWERS. 



with it alone. Wood ashes are an excellent manure 

 oii any soil, and perhaps the greensand of New Jersey 

 would answei, as they seem to require potash. 



PREPARATION OF THE SOIL. The manure should 

 be spread twenty-five or thirty loads for two horses or 

 one pair of oxen, or a cart-load of forty bushels to 

 the acre, and ploughed hi with a good even furrow. 

 The depth will depend on the depth the soil has been 

 previously cultivated. The whole should be thorough- 

 ly turned over, covering the manure completely ; and if 

 the ground has not been highly manured previously, 

 it should have a light dressing on top, of decomposed 

 manure, or wood ashes. Then harrow the ground fine 

 with a light, harrow, and rake smooth and level, re- 

 moving any coarse manure, stones, or lumps that may 

 interfere with planting or hoeing. If you have a large 

 bed, it saves labor to strike furrows through it, say a 

 rod or more apart, before commencing to rake, into 

 which all the lumps of manure and small stones may 

 be deposited and leveled over with the soil. Those 

 places will be found to produce as well or better than 

 the rest of the pieces. 



PLANTING. Plant in hills with the rows twelve 

 inches apart, and six inches between the hills. We 

 use a machine that plants in hills, two rows at once, at 

 the required distance apart. Never plant them in 

 drills if you can avoid it. If you have no machine 

 that will plant in hills, I think you will save time in 

 the after-cultivation by planting by hand. It is te- 

 dious work to weed a drill-row, but in hills you can do 

 most of the weeding with the hoe. Put from six to 

 eight seeds in a hill if you wish to raise them of nearly 

 uniform size for marketing by the bushel. With us, 

 where most of the crop is bunched on straw, for the 

 West-India and other foreign markets, we put from 

 ten to twelve seeds in the hill, and we never thin them 

 out. They seldom all vegetate, and some will be cut 

 up in hoeing, so that two thirds the number you plant 

 will be all, perhaps, that will come to maturity. They 

 require but slight covering, not exceeding one half or 

 three quarters of an inch deep, pressing the earth 

 down sightly upon the seed.. Our machines are pro- 

 vided with a roller that does this. Onions will grow 

 well very thick if provided with a sufficient quantity 

 of manure. 



VARIETIES. The kind will depend altogether on the 

 market you wish to supply. We raise the common 

 red onion, because it suits our market. Each one 

 should consult the wants of his customers in this as in 

 every other crop. The Yellow Danvers is a good sort 

 tor our home market. It is hardy, cooks white, and 

 keeps well through the winter. The White Portugal 

 is a delicate onion, and sells the highest in our home 

 markets of any variety, but is a poor keeper for winter 

 and spring use. 



The red with us is divided into three sorts, as they 

 are called, though in tact they are all one, namely, the 



early, second early, and late, and are produced by 

 merely selecting the onions for seed. The early is a 

 flat onion, sometimes even hollowed at the crown, the 

 second early is full and round, and the late is some- 

 what pointed at both ends. Therefore all you have to 

 do to produce those varieties, is to select the flattest 

 onions you can find, to raise your seed from, if you 

 wish to raise early ; the full round for the second early, 

 and so on, and you can readily produce the kind you 

 wish by a few years' propagation in this way. We 

 raise the second sort mostly because it produces well, 

 and suits our market, though there are considerable 

 quantities of the early variety raised for the early 

 market, which do very well, although they do not pro- 

 duce as much, but bring a higher price on account ot 

 being early. Be careful in purchasing seed to buy 

 from those you can rely upon, as old seed is very un- 

 certain. 



The potato-onion is largely raised by market-gar- 

 deners, to be pulled up when partly grown, and tied in 

 bunches of six or more for the market. They are a 

 valuable variety, being of mild flavor, and cook very 

 white. They are propagated by sets and not by seed. 

 A large bulb set out in spring will produce a number, 

 some of good size, which may be pulled for market or 

 the table, with several small ones, which may by set 

 the next year, and which in turn produce one or two 

 large ones. There are a great many raised from pips, 

 as they are called, which are the very small onions 

 left from the main crop of the red variety, set out in 

 spring similar to the potato-onion. They will incline 

 to run to seed, and the seed-stalk must be broken off. 

 Be careful to break them below the large place on the 

 stalk, and they will produce a good bulb for early use. 

 Both the pips and potato-onion may be set thickly in 

 drills, as early in spring as the state of the ground 

 \vill admit of, and with a litle hoeing they will pro- 

 duce a good early crop. There is a variety called the 

 top-onion, which produces the seed or set on the top, 

 like the garlic ; but they are not much grown, and 

 with us are not considered worthy of cultivation. 



HOEING. Onions should be hoed as soon as the 

 rows can be seerr and as often as the weeds show 

 themselves. I consider it better to hoe often, for you 

 can hoe them twice over when they are not very 

 weedy, in about the same time it would take to do it 

 once if you let them get overrun with weeds; and 

 then it is a long and tedious job to clear them out, be- 

 sides injuring the crop in so doing. After the second 

 or third hoeing, when they have got a good start, car- 

 rots may be planted between the hills in two out of 

 three rows, and so on, leaving one out of three for 

 space to lay the onions to cure, and in this way a good 

 crop of carrots ' can be raised without injuring the 

 onions but very little, if any. Large quantities of car- 

 rots are raised in this manner with us with very little 

 expense. They will want one hoeing after harvestirg 



