EARLY EXPERIENCES AND SEED-BEDS. IQ 



money. No kind of plants thus set, when the ground is 

 cold, will strike root quickly, or make much growth until 

 new roots are emitted near the warm surface. I have re- 

 peatedly proved a difference of ten days, and several times 

 much more, in favor of those planted just a shade deeper 

 than they stood before, and then in a few days either drawing 

 up the earth or laying the stem flat, if long, and covering 

 with surface-soil. But take him all in all, Peter Henderson 

 may well be called the father of modern market-gardening in 

 this country, and few men ever achieve such signal and well- 

 deserved success in the business as he. 



And now, as a successful seed-bed is the foundation of 

 all profitable market-gardening, I present a form I hit upori 

 from necessity, in 1869, which, though adopted now by many 

 gardeners in this section, I have never seen described in any 

 book. I found that the green and bud-worms, grasshoppers, 

 crickets and flea-beetles were so bad on my cabbage plants 

 that, failing with sprinkling the plants with foreign substanceg 



SEED-BED, WITH MOSQUITO-NET COVERING. 



to kill or drive them off (poisoning being unknown then), it 

 struck me that prevention was better than cure. So I made 

 my seed-beds the second summer like common coldframes, 

 without the ends, as shown in accompanying illustration : 



Set up on edge two 10 or 1 2-inch planks as long as the 

 bed is to be, and about 5 feet apart. Nail small strips from 

 one to the other, at intervals of about 2 feet, and at each end 



