1888 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



218 



cellar of some building, as I have mention- 

 ed, by opening connection by windows or 

 otherwise with this cellar you can avoid all 

 danger of having the plants scorched by too 

 much sun, even if you do not happen to be 

 on hand to open the ventilators. If you 

 want the house to warm up, however, by 

 closing the openings to the cellar you can 

 get a very high temperature at almost any 

 time in winter when the sun shines out 

 clear. 



SPACING YOUK PLANTS AND SEEDS IN THE 

 GREENHOUSE OK COLD KPtA:ME. 



One of the worst leaks you will probably 

 have in the m:iii;igeraeTit of your green- 

 houses or cold frames is this matter I have 

 reverted to so frequently — having little 

 patches of ground lie idle after you have 

 gone to the expense of the structure and 

 fixtures; or, what amounts to the same 

 thing, not having enough plants to fully oc- 

 cupy the ground. Of course, we do not 

 want plants crowded to their detriment; 

 but every square inch should have just as 

 much plant life on it as it can stand. To 

 economize in this way, we plant the seeds 

 quite closely, as I have explained to you ; 

 and as soon as the little plants begin to 

 crowd, we transplant them to two inches 

 apart, with a poultry-netting frame. Now 

 look over your young plants often ; and as 

 soon as one dies, put another in its place. 

 Keep the plants continually on every inch 

 of space that can sustain a plant ; and as 

 soon as the crop is in its prime, remove it 

 and get something else in its place within 

 0'/*€ hour. 



It is a nice point in sowing seeds, to get 

 them just thick enough and yet not too 

 tiiick ; and I have long wanted some meth- 

 od of doing this with the mathematical pre- 

 cision with which we transplant with the 

 frames I have mentioned. We have accom- 

 plished this, much to my satisfaction, witli 

 seeds of tomato-plants ; and I propose to try 

 it with others. 1 have mentioned to you 

 having saved the seed from a single fruit of 

 the Mikado tomato — a tomato that weighed 

 a pound and a quarter, and was away in 

 advance of all the rest in earliness. Well, 

 as these seeds were very precious, we want- 

 ed to get a plant from each seed. We ac- 

 cordingly prepared our ground nicely in one 

 of the plant-boxes, and then we made use 

 of the little tool shown on next column. 



This implement is really a string of dib- 

 bles. We made it by soldering some ordi- 

 nary tin sap-spiles to a folded bar of tin, as 

 you see. Then a plain tapered piece of 



SPACING-TOOL FOR SOWING SEEDS, ETC. 



steel was soldered in to the small end of 

 each one of the sap-spiles. We tried wood 

 before we used this ; but too much of the 

 soil stuck to the wood when it was wet 

 enough. With metal dibbles, if they are 

 kept bright and clean taey can be pushed 

 into the ground when it is just right, and 

 each one will leave a nice round hole to put 

 a plant in, or to drop in a seed. The above 

 tool is about 15 inches long, so the plants 

 are just about an inch apart. We first set 

 the tool into the earth along the outside 

 edges of the plant-boxes. This spaces the 

 rows, as you will notice. 



We now go over the ground in the boxes 

 in such a way that we have a series of holes 

 exactly one inch apart each way. Into each 

 hole we drop a tomato-seed, then sift over 

 all a little powdered moss, and then you 

 have it. You may say it takes some time 

 to put one seed at a time into these little 

 holes. So it does; but, my friend, you will 

 have more nice plants in a boxful, sown this 

 way, than you ever saw before in your life. 

 In fact, I don't think I ever saw any thing 

 prettier in a greenhouse than this boxful of 

 tomato-plants. They grew in this box only 

 an inch apart until each plant had several 

 large leaves on it. They are now standing 

 in the annex, four inches apart each way, 

 and every plant is a duplicate of its neigh- 

 bor. It is worth something to me to have a 

 lot of plants all uniform in size, and no 

 failures. 



RAISING ONIONS IN GREENHOLTSES, 



Until recently we have almost every year 

 had a lot of onions that spoiled because they 

 got soft, or began to grow before the time 

 to put them out in the spring. For a time 

 we did not know of any use we could make 

 of these, except to feed them to stock. About 

 a year ago, however, Mr. Weed tried some 

 of these in a deep box in the greenhouse ; 

 and as fast as they would shoot up in search 

 of the light, he banked them up with peat, 

 very much as we bank up celery. The con- 

 sequence was, that in a very brief period of 

 time we had long green onions, bleached 

 white like celery. These were tied up in quar- 

 ter-pound bunches, and put on the wagon. 

 During January and February they sold 

 rapidly, and we not only got rid of all the 



