V20 



K ITCH EN-GAP. DEN PLANTS. 



[chap. 



this not only keeps them upright, but supplies them with food for 

 roots that will shoot out of the stems of the plants. Peas must 

 have sticks, and these sticks must be proportioned to the height 

 which the sorts respectively generally attain. For the early-frame 

 pea, two feet and a half, or three feet, above the ground, is suffi- 

 cient ; for the next in height* four or five feet. For the tall 

 sorts, from six to eight, and even nine feet. The distances at 

 which the rows are to be sowed must be somewhat in pro- 

 portion to these heights, the smaller peas may stand at three 

 feet apart, but the tailer ones, and especially the tall ones 

 of all, ought to be at six or seven feet apart at the least. 

 You get nothing by crowding them, nor do you get any- 

 thing by sowing double instead of single rows of peas. If 

 vou trv it, vou will lind that a' single plant, standing out 

 awav from all others, will produce more fruit than any six 

 plants standing in a common single row, though the soil be the 

 same, an:! though the stick be of the same height. This is enough 

 to convince any one of the mischievous effects of crowding. If 

 you plant the taller peas at distances t o close, or indeed any 

 peas, the rows shade one another ; there will be no fruit except 

 just at the top, that part of the plant which should bear early will 

 not bear at all, those that come at top will be pods only about half 

 full : and if you plant tall peas so close, and with sticks so short 

 as to cause the wet to bend the heads of the plants down, you will 

 literally have no fruit at all, a thing which I have seen take place 

 a hundred times in my life-time. My gardener had once sowed, 

 while I was from home, a piece of garden w ith the tall marrowfat 

 pea, and had put the rows at about three feet apart. I saw^ them 

 just after they came up. The ground was such as was verv sood, 

 and which I knew would send the peas up very high : I told him 

 to take his hoe and cut up every other row ; but they looked so fine 

 and he was so obstinate, that I let them remain, and made him 

 sow some more at seven feet apart very near to the same place, 

 tel ing him that there never could be a pea there, and that if it so 

 turned out, never to aiiempt to have his own \^ay again. Both 

 the patches of peas were sticked in due time, they both grew verv 

 fine and lofty : but his patch began to get together at the top, and 

 just about the time that the pods were an inch long, there came a 

 heavy rain, smashed the whole of them down into one mass, and 

 there never v^as a single pea gathered from the patch, while the 



