l8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



another direction that, as far as I know, is still given in the 

 books, for which I owe him a most serious grudge. The first 

 edition of his work, "Gardening for Profit," advised that no 

 matter how long-stemmed (or legged, as we call it) a plant 

 may be, to set it down to the bud, and gives apparently a very 

 good reason, for the North; viz., to protect the stem from 

 freezing and splitting open. Yet I am confident that no 

 single piece of general advice ever given has caused and still 

 continues to cause so much loss of plants as that. While I 

 can only speak from actual experience here, I am sure, under 

 general conditions, it must be the same elsewhere. For sev- 

 eral years I regularly had to grow, for the fall crop of cab- 

 bage and cauliflower, just three times as many plants as I 

 needed, for fear of accidents, until I found out the trouble. 

 For several seasons the plants were set as directed, with the 

 greatest care, and yet in summer and fall, if the stems hap- 

 pened to be a little long, let a heavy shower fall just after 

 they were planted, or if set during rain and the plants were 

 at all sappy and tender, or even if set after a good rain and 

 down to the bud, invariably a large proportion would damp- 

 off. In the face of such a positive direction to set to the 

 bud, I racked my brain to find out the cause, and have to 

 admit that, after all, it came by pure chance. 



We had, one morning early in September, a splendid rain, 

 and being cloudy all day, we rushed out about twelve-thou- 

 sand plants after dinner, and kept it up until dark, and when 

 we knocked off, I happened to have left over a few plants in 

 my hand. I stopped at the end of a row, and stooping down, 

 made shallow holes with the end of my finger, and barely in- 

 serted the roots as deep as they stood before, leaving the en- 

 tire stems out. That night another fine rain fell, none too 

 much, that I could see, and yet, in three days, more than half 

 my plants had damped off at the ground, while every one of 

 that handful started off to grow. 



I saw at a glance the cause of all my past trouble. Simply 

 burying the tender stems under the ground. While this is so 

 fatal here in summer and fall, deep planting is equally unde- 

 sirable in cool weather, especially in spring, when time is 



