WINTER AND EARLY SPRING CULTIVATION. 33 



them myself, for fear my hired man would not do them full 

 justice. Arming myself with a pronged hoe, I went at it with 

 a will, and by night had all but one row nicely forked up 

 quite deeply. While it nearly broke my heart to think that 

 the poor little plants in that last row had to go neglected 

 another night, still it could not be helped, as it was actually 

 too dark to work any longer. But about daylight a heavy 

 soaking rain fell for two hours, and I lay there thinking how 

 those plants would grow, and felt more sorry than ever for 

 those poor little fellows in the packed ground, who got no 

 working. The sun shone out warm and clear in the morning, 

 but a cold north wind came up later, and that night the ther- 

 mometer went to thirty-eight degrees, but no frost. The 

 next day was bright and warm, but instead of growing off 

 rapidly, as I expected they would, the last one of the worked 

 plants, after turning a sickly yellow for a few days, laid down 

 and died, while not one of the unworked row was damaged 

 at all. The result was, that I finally made more clear money 

 from that one row than all the balance that had to be replanted. 



The reason was plain. The deep, loose soil held the cold 

 water like a sponge around the roots, giving chilly feet, while 

 the warm sunshine made their heads too hot. That is good 

 for neither man nor plant, and from that day to this I never 

 worked another heat-loving plant deeply again in early spring, 

 and have, moreover, just finished, this i4th day of February, 

 marketing the last of a crop of very fine lettuce on very rich 

 ground, that has never had an hour's work since it was 

 planted, in December. 



I append, as bearing on the subject in connection with 

 trees, as well as vegetables, an extract from Farm and Ranch, 

 by Mr. H. B. Hillyer, a thoughtful and progressive horticul- 

 turist of this state, who makes these remarks in a friendly 

 criticism of an article by me : 



***** "But friend Stringfellow's articles have set us all to 

 thinking, and the oldest will do well to read and ponder them. 

 Farmers have long known that if you plow to-day a few rows or less 

 in a corn field, and at night a frost comes on, the corn well plowed 

 will every stalk be killed, while the unplowed will escape unhurt, 

 and often does, especially if deeply planted. 

 3 HO*RT. 



