V. RADISH. 



see you when you are sowing, will know very well what 

 you are at j and though you bury the seeds very safely, 

 they will watch the first peeping up of the head, and you 

 will not have a single radish, if you sow in winter or 

 early in the spring, unless you take the proper precau- 

 tions to keep off the birds. When you take the lights 

 off the hot-bed of radishes, you must cover the bed over 

 with a net. When you tilt up the lights to give air, the 

 birds will go in unless you hang nets over the opening. 

 The market-gardeners, who want great quantities of 

 radishes pretty early in the spring, sow them in the 

 month of January in the natural ground in warm situa- 

 tions. As soon as they have sowed, they cover the beds 

 with straw, half a foot thick. Under this straw, the 

 radishes, sheltered from the frost, come up ; and then 

 the straw is taken off in the day-time, and put on again 

 at night ; and this opening by day, and covering by 

 night, is kept up until mild weather come in March, 

 when the radishes are fit to take up for sale. The 

 same may be done in a private garden ; but the straw 

 makes a great litter about the ground : it makes a pretty 

 place ugly, and the advantage is not sufficient to coun- 

 terbalance the eye-sore. Radish-seed, like all others, 

 becomes untrue, if plants of different sorts bloom and 

 ripen their seed near each other. This, therefore, must 

 be guarded against j if you want to save seed, refrain 

 from drawing a few of the very earliest of your radishes ; 

 let them stand in the bed until the middle of March or 

 first of April j. then take them up, transplant them into 

 the natural ground, and they will well ripen their seed 

 during the summer. Though, observe, they will not 

 ripen all their seed, for, like the beet, the buckwheat, 



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