im 



gLeanIkgs in bee culture. 



135 



MAT TO DO, AND HOW TO BE HAPPY WHILE DOIHC IT, 



Continued from Jan. ir>. 

 CHAPTER IX. 



He which sfiwCtli Spiiring-ly shall reap also sparingly.— IT. Cor. 9: 6. 



The above text does not, perlulps, cover 

 the grolind of this chapter, but it conies 

 nearer to it than any thing else that now 

 occurs to me. The point I wish to touch on 

 in this chapter is this : After having once 

 prepared our ground nicely for a crop, we 

 want to be sure the crop is put on to it. In 

 our best books on market gardening we are 

 told how many plants can be put on an acre. 

 For instance, Landreth's earliest cabbage is 

 so small and compact that 15,000 may be 

 grown on an acre. Now, real nice fine spec- 

 imens, started in a hot-bed or greenhouse, 

 so as to produce heads in June, ought to 

 bring 10 cents a head. This would make 

 f 1500 for an acre of cabbages. If these fig- 

 ures are too large we will suppose they will 

 bring 5 cents a head, which will be $7.';0 per 

 acre. Last June we got 20 cents a head for 

 all the early cabbages we had to spare, 

 which would be $8000 per acre, providing; we 

 had a market that would take the whole of 

 an acre. Now, what is the trouble with 

 these figures? Why, the trouble is this : 

 15,000 heads could be grown on an acre, pro- 

 viding every inch of the ground were 

 brought up to the highest fertility, and pro- 

 viding, also, that the plants were set at 

 mathematically correct distances; that is, 

 each plant should be just so far from its 

 neighbor, and no further, and there should 

 be no vacancies. This last matter of vacan- 

 cies is what I wish to speak of now. Farm- 

 ers, gardeners, and almost every one who 

 works in the soil— from those who get a dol- 

 lar for the product of a square yard in the 

 greenhouse, to those who get only a few 

 dollars an acre from their crops out on their 

 farms, all waste time and money by not 

 having their ground thoroughly and acc^i- 

 rately seeded. What I mean by " accinate- 

 ly " is, that just the right number of plants 

 are put upon an acre — no vacancies, no 

 crowding, and no getting too far apart. It 

 seems to me there is no tool on the farm 

 that is so far behind the times as the mark- 

 er. The seed-sowers do better, but it seems 

 to me that these can be greatly improved. 

 With the wire - check row, and careful 

 management, there is a pretty good prospect 

 for a full crop ; that is, for about all the 

 ground will do ; but to go over our farms as 



we ordinarily find them, my opinion ii5,tliat, 

 in this matter of seeding alone, it is a com- 

 mon thing to lose half the crop. 



TRANSPLANTING. 



Now, if this matter of preparing tli^ 

 gtound nicely — manuring it and all, and 

 then not getting a crop on it because a plant 

 has not been made to grow where the grolind 

 was ready for a plant, is expensive business, 

 it is still more expensive to prepare ground 

 for a greenhouse, and go to the expeilse of 

 glass to put over it, and steam-pipes and 

 fuel to keep it warm, and then not have 

 every square inch occupied, not oniy every 

 day, but every hour, with some sort of a plant. 

 During the convention of the bee-keepers of 

 our nation at Detroit, Dec. 9, 1885, 1 started 

 out in the morning to visit the greenhouses 

 in the suburbs ; and one point I wished to 

 determine was, whether the proprietors kept 

 their ground all doing something. I found 

 they didn't, by any means. At one place 

 where lettuce was bringing 5^2.00 a bushel, a 

 crop had been taken oft', and the ground 

 was lying idle, while plants that sadly need- 

 ed more room were standing in a bed near 

 by. The man in charge was standing around , 

 smoking his pipe, saying he knew the plants 

 ought to be in that ground, but he hadn't 

 got around to it. Now, I should want to see 

 the ground nicely fitted, and more plants 

 growing, in the place of those taken out, 

 within one hour; and under such circum- 

 stances I would take up the young plants 

 with a good ball of dirt hanging to the roots 

 of each, so that there should be no stoppage 

 in the growth— in fact, take all the earth to 

 a depth of one or two inches, along with the 

 little plants when they are taken up. Then 

 they have no check, but find themselves al- 

 ready growing, spread apart so the leaves 

 that have been struggling for light and air 

 can, any of them, have a nice little space to 

 fill up with nice crisp foliage ; and not only 

 did these men let the ground lie idle while 

 the December sun was pouring down through 

 the icy sash, but when they planted them 

 out they did it in such a slipshod way that 

 some of the little plants had nearly a foot of 

 room, and others, perhaps, not six inches. 

 I would have decided just how much room 1 

 wanted for lettuce-plants to occupy, and 



