BEETS. 39 



inches would not be better, but because I happen to have 

 a garden marker that makes rows fifteen inches apart, a 

 distance which suits most crops. It costs no more 

 to hoe a row fourteen or fifteen inches wide than one 

 which is only seven or eight inches wide. The boys 

 who cultivate com, going twice in a row, will under- 

 stand why this is so. If your corn is three and a 

 half feet apart, is is no more work to cultivate it than 

 if it was two and a half or three feet apart, for the simple 

 reason that you and the horse have to go up and down 

 each row, no matter how wide or how narrow it may be, 

 and so it is with hoeing. If the hoe, when placed 

 by the side of the plants in the drill, will reach 

 the center of the row, it is no more work to hoe a 

 wide row than a narrow one. And there are many 

 reasons in favor of wide rows, especially in our dry, 

 hot climate. Vegetables and garden crops of nearly 

 all kinds need dry, rich land, and an abundance of 

 moisture. The dry land we get by underdraining where 

 needed. The rich land we get by heavy manuring, and 

 the moisture we get by killing weeds and keeping our 

 cultivated plants a good distance apart. Plants evapor- 

 ate large quantities of water, and if you have three plants 

 on a spot of land containing only moisture enough for 

 two, the growth of these three plants will be checked 

 for want of the necessary moisture. As a rule we can 

 not profitably increase the supply of water, but we can 

 very easily reduce the number of plants. 



Sow the beets in rows fifteen inches apart, and thin out 

 the plants in the rows to four or five inches apart; then, 

 as the plants grow, thin them out still more, as soon 

 as any of them are large enough to use, and you will 

 have an abundant supply of this healthful and delicious 

 vegetable. 



In good beet seed there are two or three seeds together 

 in a sort of very rough bur. If the seed is sown with a 



