AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



baby onions. They represent two families. The 

 carrot, Hke the parsley with its umbelliferous 

 flower, belongs to the umbelliferae or parsley 

 family; the onion, to the lily family. The radish 

 has seedling and later leaves of quite different 

 form, and as the children grow it, its family re- 

 lationship to the cabbage, cauliflower and brussels 

 sprouts would not appear. Let a few of each 

 run to seed so as to bring out the resemblance. 

 The carmine of one side of the stripling beet leaf 

 likens it to, yet separates it from, the useless red- 

 weed. It will take two years to complete the life 

 story of the beet.* All five are root crops of one 

 sort or another, — while one among them is "good 

 at both ends to eat." The tender leaves of the 

 young beet plant are excellent for greens. 



Beans are a type of the wide spread leguminosae, 

 though very different in their germination from the 

 pea of the same family. They both show the root 

 nodules where dwell the nitrogen-fixing bacteria. 

 The way the beans push up, and the explanation 

 of the fat store of food in them, make a delightful 

 story of the feeding of the young plant. They 

 offer, also, lessons and experiments showing the 

 great force of swelling bud and bursting pod, of 

 things pushing toward the light, — even of trees 

 and plantlets splitting the rocks. Beans show 

 self-fertilization. 



Lettuce, if allowed to flower in an observation 



* Have a sample plot of sugar beets and of the brilliant foliage 

 beets. 



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