74 Home Vegetable Gardening 



good plan is to purchase seed of any particular va- 

 riety from the firm that makes a leading specialty of 

 it; in many cases these specialties have been intro- 

 duced by these firms and they grow their own sup- 

 plies of these seeds ; they will also be surer of being 

 true to name and type. 



Good plants are, in proportion to the amounts 

 used, just as important as good seed — and of course 

 you cannot afford losing weeks of garden useful- 

 ness by growing entirely from seed sown out-doors. 

 Beets, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, pep- 

 pers, egg-plant, and for really efficient gardening, 

 also onions, corn, melons, celery, lima beans, cucum- 

 bers, and squash, will all begin their joyous journey 

 toward the gardener's table several weeks before 

 they get into the garden at all. They will all be 

 started under glass and have attained a good, thrifty, 

 growing size before they are placed in the soil we 

 have been so carefully preparing for them. It is next 

 to impossible to describe a "good" vegetable plant, 

 but he who gardens will come soon to distinguish 

 between the healthy, short- jointed, deep-colored 

 plant which is ready to take hold and grow, and the 

 soft, flabby (or too succulent) drawn-up growth of 

 plants which have been too much pampered, or 

 dwarfed, weazened specimens which have been 

 abused and starved; he will learn that a dozen of 

 the former will yield more than fifty of the latter. 



