130 



KITCHEN-GARDEN PLANTS. 



[chap. 



be had with hardly any trouble even in the winter time ; but it is 

 in fact, not ht to eat. In all sowings of radishes, the greatest care 

 must be taken to keep away the birds, until the radishes be fairly 

 up, and even begin to show rough leaf ; for they are extremely 

 fond of these seeds, and they are sowed at a season of the year 

 when bird-food is scarce. The sparrows will see you when you are 

 sowing, will know very well what you are at ; and, though you bury 

 the seeds very safely, they will w^atch the first peeping up of the 

 head, and you will not have a single radish, if you sow in winter 

 or early in the spring, unless you take the proper precautions to 

 keep olf the birds. When you take the lights off the hot-bed of 

 radishes, you must cover the bed over with a net. When you tilt 

 up the lights to give air, the birds will go in unless you hang nets 

 over the opening. The market-gardeners, who want great quan- 

 tities of radishes pretty early in the spring, sow them in the month 

 of January in the natural ground in warm situations. As soon as 

 they have sowed, they cover the beds with straw, half a foot thick. 

 Under this straw, the radishes, sheltered from the frost, come up ; 

 and then the straw is taken off in the day-time, and put on again 

 at night ; and this opening by day, and covering by night, is kept 

 up until mild weather come in March, when the radishes are fit to 

 take up for sale. The same may be done in a private garden ; but 

 the straw makes a great litter about the ground : it makes a pretty 

 place ugly, and the advantage is not sufficient to counterbalance the 

 eye-sore. Radish-seed, like all others, becomes untrue, if plants of 

 different sorts bloom and ripen their seed near each other. This, 

 therefore, must be guarded against ; if you want to save seed, 

 refrain from drawing a few of the very earliest of your radishes ; 

 let them stand in the bed until the middle of March or first of 

 April : then take them up, transplant them into the natural ground^ 

 and they will well ripen their seed during the summer. Though, 

 observe, they will not ripen all their seed ; for, like the beet, the 

 buck^^ heat, and many other plants, they continue to blow long 

 after part of their seed is nearly ripe. Therefore, if you were to 

 stop till all the seed ripened, before you gathered any, you would 

 stand a chance to lose the whole ; for the birds would have eaten 

 the first seed long before ail the flowers were off the plant. The 

 best way, therefore, is to pull up the plants when the first seed is 

 ripe ; and that gives you plenty of time to put the whole plant to 

 lie and wither in the sun, without which, too, it is very difficult to 



