V. PEA. 



out away from all others, will produce more fruit 

 than any six plants standing in a common single row, 

 though the soil be the same, and though the stick be 

 of the same height. This is enough to convince any one 

 of the mischievous effects of crowding. If you plant 

 the taller peas at distances too close, or, indeed/any peas, 

 the rows shade one another ; there will be no fruit except 

 just at the top, that part of the plant which should bear 

 early will not bear at all, those that come at top will be 

 pods only about half full $ and, if you plant tall peas so 

 close, and with sticks so short as to cause the wet to bend 

 the heads of the plants down, you will literally have no 

 fruit at all, a thing which I have seen take place a hun- 

 dred times in my life-time. My Gardener had once 

 sowed, while I was from home, a piece of garden with 

 the tall marrowfat pea, and had put the rows at about 

 three feet apart. I saw them just after they came up. 

 The ground was such as was very good, and which 

 I knew would send the peas up very high ; I told 

 him to take his hoe and cut up every other row; but 

 they looked so fine and he was so obstinate, that I let 

 them remain, and made him sow some more at seven 

 feet apart very near to the same place, telling him that 

 there never could be a pea there, and that, if it so turned 

 out, never to attempt to have his own way again. Both 

 the patches of peas were sticked in due time, they both 

 grew very fine and lofty $ but his patch began to get 

 together at the top, and just about the time that the pods 

 were an inch long, there came a heavy rain, smashed 

 the whole of them down into one mass, and there never 

 was a single pea gathered from the patch, while the other 

 patch, the single rows of which were seven feet apart, 



