144 VEGETABLE GARDENING. 



while if constantly gathered when green and not allowed to 

 ripen. the plants will continue bearing a longtime. In the vicin- 

 ity of pickling factories, cucumbers for pickles are often raised 

 in large quantities as a farm crop and are contracted for at a 

 specified price per thousand or per hundred pounds, for the 

 season. For home use or for storing and marketing in the 

 winter, the cucumbers are packed in salt or salt brine when 

 gathered. Growers generally use about seven pounds of salt 

 to a bushel of cucumbers. They may also be packed in dry 

 salt in layers, which has the effect of taking the water out of 

 the cucumbers, causing them to shrivel up and lie in their own 

 juice. When wanted for use, they are freshened out in water, 

 whichcauses those that are shrivelled to swell up plump; they 

 are then put in vinegar. Cucumber pickles are easily kept 

 until the following spring in this way, but when kept later than 

 spring they get soft and are not so desirable. Cucumbers will 

 stand without injury a great amount of dry weather if fre- 

 quently cultivated. 



Starting cucumbers in cold frames and hotbeds and then 

 transplanting them to the open ground when all clanger of frost 

 is over is a common practice where they are wanted for early 

 use. Under this system the seed is sown in old strawberry 

 boxes, tomato cans, flower pots. etc. Square pieces of in- 

 verted sod are also used for the same purpose, four or five 

 seeds being sown on each piece five inches square and covered 

 with good soil. The plants in this latter case root into the 

 sod and are easily moved. Starting cucumbers this way has 

 the merit of advancing the period of maturity of the plants, 

 and as they are well started when set out there is little danger 

 of attacks of the striped beetle, and the fruit is earlier than 

 when sown in the open ground. In following out this plan, 

 the seed should not be sown before the first of May, or the 

 plants will be too large to move well. Before the plants are 

 removed from the frames to the open ground, they should be 

 exposed without the sash for several days until well hardened 

 off. When these plants are moved to the open ground, they 

 should be set rather deeper than they grew in the frames. 

 They are then cultivated the same as plants from seed sown in 

 the hill. Another way for advancing the cucumber season 

 when hotbed sash is used is by planting a hill of them very 



