43 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
best by the superior quality and greater quantity of the 
produce, and the greater length of time during which the 
plants will continue in bearing. 
The best manures for this crop, after farmyard dung, which 
is undoubtedly the best, are guano, superphosphate, kainit, and 
gypsum, which may be employed together in a mixture, and 
dug in when the ground is prepared, at the rate of half a ton 
per acre. If one comprehensive manure is required, there is 
nothing better than phospho-guano, which may be employed at 
the rate of five hundredweight per acre, if dug into the 
ground, or at a fourth of that rate, if sown in the drills. In 
any and every case where artificial manure is employed, care 
should be taken to prevent the manure and the seed meeting. 
A sprinkle of earth will prevent this. The tendency of arti- 
ficials is to kill the young plants, hence they are said to save 
the cultivator the trouble of thinning. 
Sowing. — The earliest peas should be sown on ridges, and 
the main crops in trenches. In other words, the first earlies 
require the warmest and driest position that can be found for 
them, and the more luxuriant and later sorts require heavily 
manured land in positions favourable to the retention of mois- 
ture. In every case close cropping is to be avoided as an 
unprofitable procedure, hence the custom of growing spinach, 
and other smallish subjects between early peas is commendable, 
as necessitating a sufficient space between the rows of peas to 
insure a free circulation of air. The dwarfest sorts, however, 
admit of being sown in close order, but the space between the 
rows must be increased in a direct ratio with the heights of the 
varieties. Our custom has been to extend the pea crop over 
the largest extent of ground possible, so as to have room 
between the rows for plantation of cabbage, cauliflower, and 
other summer crops, the tallest sorts of peas being fifteen to 
twenty feet apart in the rows, and the dwarfer sorts at least 
five feet. The practice commonly prevailing of sowing tali 
peas so close that there is scarcely room left for the gathering 
of the crop is simply a waste of labour, land, and seed, for 
where the vines mix and entangle the produce is miserably 
small, and, if the crop has to contend with drought, it soon 
becomes hopelessly mildewed. 
In sowing the seed, drills two inches deep should be drawn 
with the hoe guided by the line, and the seed sprinkled in the 
drills with careful regularity. The early and wiry-habited 
