328 GARDENING FOR THE SOUTH. 



CORN SALAD.— ( Yahrianella olitoria.) 

 Corn Salad, Fetticus, or Lamb's Lettuce, is a small 

 annual plant, a native of English wheat-fields. It has 

 long, narrow leaves of a pale glaucous hue, and very 

 small, pale-blue flowers. It has long been cultivated in 

 English gardens as a winter and spring salad. There is 

 also a round-leaved variety, with leaves thicker, and of a 

 darker green. 



Culture. — Corn salad likes a loam of moderate fertility, 

 not too heavy. It is raised from seed, one quarter of an 

 ounce of which will sow a bed four feet by fifteen. Sow 

 seed of the preceding year's growth, at intervals from 

 August until frost, in drills six inches apart. Thin the 

 plants as wanted for consumption to four inches in the 

 drills, and keep free from weeds by frequent hoeing. 

 Gather the leaves to eat while young, taking the outer 

 ones, as with spinach. It will be fit for use all winter, 

 wh^re the ground keeps open. A spring sowing may be 

 mp^e among the earliest crops, put in for later use when 

 desired. Allow some of the plants to shoot up to seed, 

 which, as they shed easily, is shaken out upon a cloth 

 spread under the plants. It keeps six years. 



Use. — It is used during winter and early spring to in- 

 crease the variety of small salads, and as a substitute for 

 lettuce. In France it is boiled like spinach. 



COWPEA.— ( Vigna Catjang.) 



Several species are largely cultivated in most Southern 

 climates, the vines of which are used for forage, and the 

 seeds employed not only for stock feeding, but the finer 

 kinds are used largely as substitutes for kidney beans as 

 food for man. 



The cowpea is generally considered to be a field crop, 

 and it would seem to have no place in a treatise of the 



