190 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



partial, or even total failure may be the result. Sometimes a 

 single misstep may di3stroy the hopes of a season. It is here 

 that experience is an invaluable guide. She observes and treas- 

 ures up a thousand trifles which are not thought worthy of a 

 place in books, and yet, trifles as they seem, they often contain 

 within themselves the secret of success or failure. In many 

 instances the choice of a variety, the selection of seed, the man- 

 ner or the time of planting, are things of the first- importance. 

 We have known beans to be so planted as never to come up, or 

 to have expended so much of vital energy in the process as to 

 accomplish notliing afterward. So, too, a slight difference in 

 the planting of corn has, in the end, made the difference 

 between a fair crop and almost total failure. It is so through 

 the whole round of vegetable culture ; while there is much to be 

 learned from books, there is nothing like personal contact with 

 nature, to wrest from her the secret laws of vegetable life, so 

 that she may be aided in converting the unpromising seed into 

 so many and useful forms to meet the wants of man. 



Having said thus much upon the subject of vegetable culture 

 in general, and called attention to its growing, importance, we 

 propose in what we have further to say, to take up two or three 

 of the more prominent articles, and treat them somewlTat in 

 detail, deeming such a course more useful than an attempt to 

 gl) over the whole ground of garden culture in our prescribed 

 limits. We have selected for this purpose onions, cabbages and 

 winter squashes. 



ONIONS. 



The importance of the onion will be conceded by all. It not 

 only enters largely into our home consumption, but is becoming 

 an article of export. In the year 1853, the value of this crop 

 exported was over two hundred thousand dollars, — a little more 

 than the value of apples exported the same year. It is both 

 wholesome and nutritious, and is especially valuable as an anti-' 

 dote to those diseases incurred by a too exclusive diet of salt 

 meats, &c., such as is used in the army and at sea. As an 

 instance of the increasing demand for this esculent, it may be 

 stated that one of our inland towns has lately commenced its 

 cultivation, and tliough there is no large market in the vicinity, 

 and the ground devoted to it is becoming extended every year, 



