80 GARDENING FOR YOUNG AND OLD. 



the hoe. The tall kind should be in rows three feet 

 apart, and the plants a foot in the row. After they are 

 well started, nothing is required except to keep the land 

 free from weeds. The principal use of okra is in soups. 

 The green pods are used for this purpose; they contain 

 much mucilage which thickens the soup, and imparts an 

 agreeable flavor. It is regarded as heathful and nu- 

 tritious. The ripe seeds roasted and ground have some- 

 times been used as a substitute for coffee. 



ONIONS. 



Great improvements have been made in the cultivation 

 of Onions, and still greater improvements are yet to be 

 made, especially in our methods of drilling in the seed 

 and hoeing, and weeding the crop. I have for several 

 years sown my onion seed in rows, from twenty-one to 

 twenty-five inches apart, and cultivated with a horse-hoe. 

 It is a great saving of labor, but many will object to the 

 plan, because they think they can get a much heavier 

 yield per acre when the seed is sown in closer rows, say 

 a foot apart. Such is probably the case. It is a question 

 of land versus labor. The improvement I want to see 

 made is, in having a drill which will sow four rows at a 

 time. It would be better, probably, to have the two cen- 

 ter rows twenty inches apart, and the other rows a foot 

 apart. This would give plenty of room for a quiet horse 

 to walk between the center rows. We should have the 

 piece sown as follows: there would be one space twenty 

 inches wide, and then four rows a foot apart, each, and 

 then another wide space of twenty inches, and so on. 

 We must then have a cultivator or horse-hoe that would 

 go between these rows. It must be the exact size of the 

 drill, and provided with a steerage attachment which 

 would give us control of the hoes or cultivator teeth. If 



