Part Two — Vegetables 



Chapter VIII. 



STARTING THE PLANTS 



THIS beautifully prepared garden spot — or 

 rather the plant food in it — is to be trans- 

 formed into good things for your table, 

 through the ever wonderful agency of plant growth. 

 The thread of life inhering in the tiniest seed, in the 

 smallest plant, is the magic wand that may transmute 

 the soil's dull metal into the gold of flower and fruit. 



All the thought, care and expense described in the 

 preceding chapters are but to get ready for the two 

 things from which your garden is to spring, in ways 

 so deeply hidden that centuries of the closest obser- 

 vation have failed to reveal their inner workings. 

 Those two are seeds and plants. (The sticklers for 

 technical exactness will here take exception, calling 

 our attention to tubers, bulbs, corms and numerous 

 other taverns where plant life puts up over night, 

 between growth and growth, but for our present 

 purpose we need not mind them.) 



The plants which you put out in your garden will 

 have been started under glass from seed, so that, in- 



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