v.] 



NASTURTIUM, ONION. 



spring. The plants ought to be thinned to four or live inches 

 apart. Good tillage between the rows is necessary. The seed 

 will be ripe in July, and then the stalks should be cut oif, and, 

 when quite dry, the seed threshed out, and put by for use. 



166. NASTURTIUM.— An annual plant, with a half-red half- 

 yellow flower, which has an offensive smell ; but it bears a seed 

 enveloped in a fleshy pod, and that pod, taken before the seed 

 becomes ripe, is used as a thing to pickle. The seed should be 

 sowed very early in the spring. The plants should have pretty 

 long bushy sticks put to them ; and four or five of them will bear 

 a great quantity of pods. They will grow^ in almost any ground ; 

 but the better the ground the fewer of them are necessary. 



167. ONION. — This is one of the main vegetables. Its uses 

 are many, and they are all well know^n. The modes of cultivation 

 for crop are various. I^oiir I shall mention, and by either, a good 

 crop may be raised. Sow early in March. Let the ground be 

 richy but not from fresh dung. Make the ground very fine ; make 

 the rows a foot apart, and scatter the seed thinly aiong a drill two 

 inches deep. Then fill in the drills ; and then press the earth down 

 upon the seed by treading the ground all over. Then give the 

 ground a very slight smoothing over with a rake. When the plants 

 get to be three inches high, thin them to four inches, or to eight 

 inches, if you wish to have very large onions. Keep the ground 

 clear of weeds by hoeing ; but do not hoe deep, nor raise earth 

 about the plants ; for these make them run to neck and not to 

 hidh. When the tips of the leaves begin to be brow^n, bend down 

 the necks, so that the leaves lie flat with the ground. When the 

 leaves are nearly dead, pull up the onions, and lay them to dry, in 

 order to be put away for winter use. Some persons, instead of 

 sowing the onions all along the drill, drop four or five seeds at 

 every six or seven inches' distance ; and leave the onions to grow 

 thus, in clumps ; and this is not a bad way ; for they w ill squeeze 

 each other out. They will not be large : but they will be ripe 

 earlier, and will not run to neck. The third mode of cultivation 

 is as follows : sow the onions any time between mid-May and 

 mid-June, in drills six inches apart, and put the seed very thick 

 along the drills. Let all the plants stand, and they will get to 

 be about as big round as the top of your little-finger. Then the 

 leaves will get yellow, and, when that is the case, pull up the 

 onions and lay them on a board, till the sun have withered up the 



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