70 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
handsome produce in such plenty as to prove that the liberal 
system is the most profitable. 
The object of the cultivator should be to secure strong 
plants as early in the summer as possible. Therefore, the 
seed should be sown on a well-prepared seed-bed in February, 
or early in March, and the plants should be put out as soon 
as large enough to be lifted, and showery weather should be 
selected for the operation, or lacking rain, the plants should 
be shaded for a time, and regularly watered. A poor soil will 
not produce this vegetable in a state to be worth gathering ; 
therefore, prepare for the plantation a deeply dug and well- 
manured plot. Our mode of procedure is to plant potatoes 
in rows four feet apart, and put out the Brussels sprouts 
between them two feet apart in the row. When the potatoes 
are taken up, the sprouts have the full breadth of four feet, 
and they very soon afterwards nearly meet across the rows, 
and it may be understood by the fact that we obtain our 
supplies of buttons from gigantic plants. 
But we can do better than this, and now proceed to describe 
the better way. We make a sowing of seed in the first week 
of August, and as soon as possible thin the plants to three or 
four inches apart, and leave them to stand the winter. As 
early in March as weather will permit, we transplant them 
into the potato plot on a similarly good piece of ground in 
rows three or four feet apart, and they soon make a tre- 
mendous growth, and supply fine buttons in enormous quantity 
from the end of August until the month of March following. 
This practice answers perfectly on our cold damp soil, five 
miles north from London, and we take care to provide for the 
seed-bed a sheltered nook on the highest part of the ground. 
Were we located north of the Trent, we should sow in July 
to stand the winter in the open, and again in August for a 
few hundred plants, to be aided with some cheap protection. 
Whatever conduces to the early and luxuriant growth of this 
useful vegetable must be adopted as profitable, unless it is a 
very extravagant affair indeed. We expect to find our plants 
four feet high, and literally studded with round buttons the 
size of a small orange some time in the autumn, proportionate 
to the time at which the seed was sown. 
Now, perhaps the reader would like to know what sort w'e 
grow, for there are many in the market. Well, we always 
order “imported seed,” and find that other so-called improve- 
