THE KITCHEN-GAEDEN. 13 



with Straw or litter, kept from blowing away by the most convenient 

 weights, as scantling, rails, planks, etc. We all know what a bustle 

 - there is to get in early peas. If they were sown in the fall, they would 

 start up the moment the frost was out of the ground, and would be ten 

 days earlier in bearing, in spite of every effort made by the spring- 

 sowers to make their peas overtake them. 



One object of this fall §owing is, to get the work done ready for 

 spring"; for, at that season, you have so many things to do at once ! 

 Besides, you cannot sow the instant the frost breaks up ; for the ground 

 is wet and clammy, unfit to be dug or trenched or trodden upon. So 

 that here are ten days lost. But the seed, which has lain in the ground 

 all the winter, is ready to start the moment the earth is clear of the 

 winter frost, and it is up by the time you can get other seed into the 

 ground in a good state. 



- How to Sow, — Garden plants should be sown in drills. It facilitates 

 cultivation, and it is, upon the whole, an absolute saving of labor. 

 Where seed-drills are not used, the following simple implement, which 

 any one can quickly make, may be used. Cobbett thus describes it : 



"Suppose there be a bed of onions to be sown. I make my drills in 

 this way : I have what I call a driller, which is a rake six feet long in 

 the head. This head is made of white oak, two inches by two and a 

 half, and has teeth in it at eight inches asunder, each tooth being about 

 six inches long, and an inch in diameter at the head, and is pointed a 

 little at the end that meets the ground. This gives nine teeth, there* 

 being four inches over at each end of the head. In this head, there is 

 a handle fixed of about six feet long. When my ground is prepared, 

 raked nice and smooth, and cleaned from stones and clods, I begin at 

 the left-hand end of the bed, and draw across it nine rows at once. I 

 then proceed, taking care to keep the left-hand tooth of the driller in 

 the right-hand drill that has just been made ; so that now I make but 

 eight new drills, because (for a guide) the left-hand tooth goes this time 

 in the drill which was before made by the right-hand tooth. Thus, at 

 every draw, I make eight drills. And, in this way, a pretty long bed is 

 formed into nice straight drills, in a very few minutes. The sowing, 

 after this, is done with truth, and the depth of the covering must be 

 alike for all the seeds. If it be parsnips or carrots, which require a 

 widel" distance between the rows, or cabbage-plants, which, as they are 

 to stand only for a while, do not require distances so wide — in these 

 cases other drillers may be made. And what is the expense ? There is 

 scarcely an American farmer who would not make a set of drillers, for 

 six-inch, eight-inch, and twelve-inch distances, in a winter's day ; and, 

 consisting of a white-oak head and handle, and of locust teeth, every 

 body knows that the tools might descend from father to son to the 

 fourth or fifth generation. I hope, therefore, that no one will, on the 

 score of tedionsness, object to the drilling of seeds in a garden." 



Triinsplanting. — The weather for transplanting, whether of table 

 vegetables, or of trees, is the same as that for sowing. If you do this 

 work in wet weather, or when the ground is wet, the work cannot be 

 well done. It is no matter what the plant is, whether it be a cucumber- 

 plant or an oak-tree. One half of the bad growth that we see in orch- 



