PLANTING 83 



half-year of gardening into three planting periods : early, mid- 

 summer, and late. The early spring planting would include 

 lettuce, carrots, radishes, onions, and early peas, to be fol- 

 lowed by beans and corn ; the midsummer planting calls for 

 cabbage, tomato plants, and beets, and also for carrots again ; 

 the autumn planting includes such vegetables as celery, cab- 

 bage, and cauliflower, all of which will be set out as small 

 plants, with the addition of such seeds as can withstand the 

 hardships of winter. As a rule, do not replace a plant by one 

 which takes out of the soil its food materials in about the 

 same proportion ; plan rather to replace it by a plant which 

 will use elements that have not yet been largely drawn upon. 

 The food in the soil can thus be made to go a great deal 

 farther. A few general rules will save many a mistake. To 

 begin with, it should be remembered that, classed according 

 to diet, such vine plants as the cucumber and squash belong 

 in one group ; that the root crops, together with potatoes and 

 onions (neither of which, of course, is a true root), belong in 

 another ; while the seed crops, beans and peas, together with 

 the cabbage tribe and tomatoes, make a third. All those that 

 belong in one of these groups have been found to use up the 

 essential food elements in about the same proportions. This 

 gives a simple basis for the rules of crop rotation. Cabbage 

 consumes a great amount of nitrogen ; so does corn. Corn 

 and potatoes, on the other hand, draw heavily upon the sup- 

 ply of potash. Beans and peas, however, actually enrich the 

 soil with proteids, which, as we know, are so valuable for 

 the nitrogen they contain. 



The subject of crop rotation is one that requires serious con- 

 sideration. This deals with the system by which a carefully 

 arranged sequence of different crops is grown advantageously 

 upon the same piece of land. Such a scheme is directly 

 opposed to the old-fashioned one-crop system, by which 



