Starting the Plants 8i 



is a tremendously important point about all garden- 

 ing operations. 



' SOWING THE SEED 



Having now our frames provided and our soil 

 composed properly and good strong tested seed on 

 hand, we are prepared to go about the business of 

 growing our plants with a practical certainty of 

 success — a much more comfortable feeling than if, 

 because something or other had been but half done, 

 we must anxiously await results and the chances of 

 having the work we had put into the thing go, after 

 all, for nothing. 



The seed may be sown either directly in the soil 

 or in "flats." Flats are made as follows : Get from 

 your grocer a number of cracker boxes, with the 

 tops. Saw the boxes lengthwise into sections, a few 

 two inches deep and the rest three. One box will 

 make four or five such sections, for two of which 

 bottoms will be furnished by the bottom and top of 

 the original box. Another box of the same size, 

 knocked apart, will furnish six bottoms more to use 

 for the sections cut from the middle of the box. The 

 bottoms of all, if tight, should have, say, five three- 

 quarter-inch holes bored in them to allow any sur- 

 plus water to drain off from the soil. The shallow 

 flats may be used for starting the seed and the three- 

 inch ones for transplanting. Where sowing but a 



