DREER’S VEGETABLES UNDER GLASS. 39 
In addition to its spring-time usefulness the border ought 
to carry many things safely through the winter months, 
the plants being protected only by straw, salt hay or other 
litter. Lettuce plants will go through the winter without 
harm. Onions planted in October will yield early shoots or 
““scullions.’’ Spinach will be ready for the earliest market ; 
it can be cut, in fact, all winter, during mild days. And 
there are many other purposes for which the border is pecu- 
liarly adapted. Of course this part of the garden is to be as 
rich as well-rotted manure will make it. A two-inch coat of 
manure ought to be dug under previous to every crop, and a 
complete fertilizer also used as a stimulant of rapid growth. 
This excessive manuring is entirely safe where plenty of 
water can be used. . And thus we come to consider the sub- 
ject of irrigation. 
The border must be frequently and thoroughly watered 
in the spring of the year. It must be planted to its utmost 
capacity, cultivated to perfection with hand hoe or wheel hoe, 
and worked in all respects as intensely as the hot bed itself. 
The border offers opportunity for the most concentrated forms 
of out-of-doors gardening. 
IRRIGATION OF BoRDERS. To take well-started plants 
of beets, lettuce, &c., out of the frames in the early spring, 
or to sow seeds of radish or other early market crops in the 
open border, and then to have all plans frustrated by drying 
winds or prolonged drought is neither satisfactory nor profit- 
able. There are crops indeed (cauliflower, for instance) 
which resent any interruption in their growth, and which 
never fully recover from injury sustained in transplanting 
into dry soil. 
It is hence necessary to be prepared to irrigate the border ; 
and the more thoroughly the work is done the better. Ona 
small scale the watering pot will answer, but on a large scale 
a rubber hose pipe is mostly employed by market gardeners. 
