240 Salad Culture. 



these mats are on, they will enable the cultivator to carry it bodily 

 away from the bed or beds j for it should not be allowed to melt on 

 the beds or in the alleys between. In late spring the cloche is not 

 required, nor is it for any except those crops that require bringing 

 forward. Thus the March and April supply is planted in October 

 on a nice light bed, with a surfacing of an inch or so of thoroughly 

 rotten manure or leaf mould. These little plants are allowed to 

 remain all through the winter unprotected ; and when in spring 

 the most forward lettuces are cut, the glasses are immediately 

 placed over the most advanced and promising of the little ones that 

 have remained exposed. By that time they have begun to start up, 

 encouraged by the early spring sun, and from the moment they 

 receive the additional warmth and steady temperature of the cloche 

 they commence to unfold the freshest and most juicy of leaves, and 

 finish by becoming those great-hearted and tender products which 

 one may see in such fine condition in the Paris markets in early 

 spring. In the first instance three or five little plants may be put 

 under each glass, and these thinned out and used as they grow, so 

 that eventually but one is left, and that, without exaggeration, 

 often grows nearly as big as the glass itself. Happily, no water is 

 required, as the ground possesses sufficient moisture in winter and 

 spring, and evaporation is prevented by the glasses and the protect- 

 ing litter that covers the space between them. Thus a genial, 

 agreeable moisture is kept up at all times, and the very conditions 

 that suit lettuces are preserved by the simplest means. 



By means of the same glasses the various small saladings may 

 be grown to perfection, or receive a desirable start. Thus, for 

 instance, if corn salad be desired perfectly clean and fresh in mid- 

 winter, it will be obtained by sowing it between the smaller let- 

 tuces grown under these glasses ; and so with any other small salad 

 or seedling that maybe gathered or removed without loss before or 

 at the time the more important crop requires all the room. These 

 bell glasses will be found of quite as much advantage in the British 

 garden as they are in the French ; they will render possible the 

 production of as fine winter salads in our gardens as ever the French 



