V. BEET. 



earliest pods. We ought always to set apart a row or a 

 piece of a row for seed, and resolve never to touch it till 

 the seed be ripe. This is hardly ever done : we keep 

 eating on : above all things, we take the first : those 

 that we save for seed are such as have had the good for- 

 tune to escape us, so that, our seed of this important 

 plant is generally very bad j it is but half ripe, and a 

 great deal of it rots as soon as it is put into the ground. 

 If the seed of this plant be well ripened, it will keep 

 good, if kept in the pod, for several years ; but, if taken 

 out of the pod, it cannot be relied on after the first 

 year. It is always the best way to keep it in the pod 

 until it be sown, if that be practicable. It continues to 

 be nourished there, and nature has excluded it completely 

 from the air. 



125. BEET. Some people enumerate several varieties 

 of the beet, and these of different colours. There are 

 but two cultivated in our gardens, and the great sign of 

 their perfection, is, their deep blood colour, a deficiency 

 in which respect is regarded as an imperfection. One of 

 these is tap-rooted, like a carrot, and the other pretty 

 nearly as much a bulb as the common garden turnip. 

 The seed of the beet is a little, round, rough pod, thick 

 and hard, and containing within it sometimes two and 

 sometimes three black seeds. The pod is sowed for it is 

 next to impossible to get the seed out of it and to sepa- 

 rate one from the other. To have fine beets, the 

 ground should be dug very deeply and made very fine. 

 There ought to be no clods in it, especially for the tap- 

 rooted beet 5 for clods turn aside the tap-root and spoil 

 the shape of the beet. No fresh dung-, by any means ; 



