Sowing, Transplanting and Culture 19 



all danger of frost is passed ; or they may be treated as 

 the tender annuals and sown in the open only after 

 danger of frost. The tender annuals are those which 

 will perish at a touch of frost, so they must be sown 

 only after that danger is past. 



Of course it is impossible to tell just when this 

 date will be in any location. June first is certainly 

 safe, in the vicinity of New York, but by that time 

 the gardener has lost perhaps two or three weeks of 

 valuable time. The risk of loss in most cases is small 

 — the cost of a few packets of seed — so that it is usu- 

 ally customary to sow the seed early in May and 

 accept the risk of its having to be planted again. 

 May fifteenth is usually considered a perfectly safe 

 date. This is about corn planting time, a period which 

 the Government itself has worked out on a map show- 

 ing the date over the whole country. The May first 

 belt extends from the middle of the Jersey coast out 

 through the lower part of Pennsylvania, the central 

 part of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, along the lower 

 edge of Iowa and through the lower and central part 

 of Nebraska. On April fifteenth corn may be 

 planted through the lower part of Virginia, central 

 Kentucky, central Missouri and central Kansas. The 

 April first season extends over the central part of 

 North Carolina, through Tennessee, diagonally 

 through the lower edge of Missouri, the upper cor- 

 ner of Oklahoma, into the lower left-hand corner of 

 Kansas. March fifteenth is safe enough for southern 

 North Carolina, the central part of South Carolina, 



