40 SEEDS AND SEED SOWING. 



Hot-beds and frames should always be protected by be- 

 ing placed in the angle of a close board fence, six feet high, 

 leaving proper space to get round them. The fence should 

 only be on the northern and western sides, so as to keep 

 off the cold winds. 



Where there is no convenience for making a hot-bed, 

 early vegetable plants can be raised in boxes covered with 

 loose panes of glass, and placed in a sunny window in the 

 kitchen or sitting-room. They will not come forward as 

 fast as those in a hot-bed, so should be started a couple 

 of weeks sooner. 



SEEDS AND SEED SOWING. 



Too much care cannot be exercised in obtaining good 

 seeds, for it is very provoking to spend money and labor 

 upon a crop, and find that one-half or two-thirds of it is 

 not true to name, or is of inferior quality. It makes all 

 the difference in the world, whether wo get ninety-nine 

 good heads of cabbage out of a hundred planted, or only 

 get ten out of a hundred, and yet we have seen such cases. 

 Seed that may cost a dollar an ounce would, in such cases, 

 be vastly more economical than that which only cost 

 twenty-five cents. Always, therefore, buy the best seeds, 

 even at a higher price, from seedsmen of established repu- 

 tation. 



With all the care used by seed growers and seedsmen to 

 obtain only the best, yet sometimes disappointments will 

 ensue, for as nearly ah 1 the vegetables we grow are mon- 

 strosities, or abnormal developments of the plants, there 

 is a continual effort in nature to revert to the original typo 

 from whence the variety originated, and these leaps back- 

 ward are sometimes very sudden. The accusations brought 

 against seedsmen, of selling seeds that do not or will not 



