CROSS BREEDING. 
521 
apart, you have only to cut six-inch vacancies 
in the drills, and your crop is properly thinned; 
but when sown broadcast, you do not attempt 
to make them in rows, but to thin them out 
to about six inches ; not regularly but there- 
abouts, generally giving or taking a little one 
side or other, to preserve the best plants. 
When the plants grow a little, they soon 
touch ; but the round-leaved spinach being 
fit to cut as soon as there is any quantity 
worth eating, there are many who do not 
even take the trouble to thin with the hoe, 
but sow as thinly as they can, and as soon 
as the plants have six leaves, pull them out 
by hand, taking the best plants and leaving 
the weak ones ; this gives the opportunity of 
eating the plants down to thin the rest. This 
first drawing is of course smaller than we 
should choose to eat them as the general crop ; 
because the plants ought to be a good size, 
otherwise there is a waste ; but seeing that 
they are drawn to thin the beds and give the 
others more room, it is simply a question, 
whether the crop, if properly thinned early, 
would grow so much faster, as to repay one 
for wasting all that are cut up with the hoe. 
Our own experience dictates, that for private 
use, a drill drawn here and there, and sowed 
thinly with spinach, grows well and rapidly ; 
and that there is no occasion to thin them with 
the hoe, but as soon as the best plants are 
large enough to eat, draw them out and give 
the remainder room to grow. In the heat of 
summer, spinach is very apt to run to seed 
before it attains any growth ; but this may be 
counteracted a good deal by copious watering, 
so as to soak the ground well before the seed 
is sown and after it is up. Thinning out 
while very young, and keeping it clear of 
weeds, the growth is then rapid, but it must 
be watched and taken up for use before the 
seed, or rather the flower-buds, appear. In 
this young state everything but the root is 
eatable. 
THE WINTER SPINACH. 
Spinach for winter use is sown in the au- 
tumn, and the prickly spinach, which is very 
hardy, and a continuous grower, is generally 
sown for it. The plant is not pulled up, as is the 
case with the round-leaved, but the full-sized 
leaves are picked off and the others left to 
grow from time to time, and thus a supply is 
kept up all the winter through ; all ordinary 
frosts having no bad effect on the plants. 
This may be sown in drills nine inches apart ; 
or, if sown broadcast, thinner than the round- 
leaved. When up, they may be thinned to 
nine inches distance, and be kept clear from 
weeds ; as soon as the lower leaves are full- 
grown, they may be picked off for eating, and 
this picking may be continued as] often as the 
leaves come large enough. The spring sow- 
ings may begin in March and be continued in 
April and May. Some repeat in June. The 
autumn sowing may begin in August, and be 
continued in September and October. There 
is nothing to prevent those who are fond of it 
from following up the sowing of the spring 
kinds all through the summer ; but as it 
perfects itself quicker, and will run to seed 
while small, there is less to eat, and it wants 
more attention lest it be lost altogether. But 
peas and cauliflowers supersede it, and no one 
cares for it the two or three hottest months. 
SOIL AND SITUATION. 
The ground should be open and well ma- 
nured. In the early months it should not be 
shaded, but in the hotter weather it may be 
sown among the trees, where the hottest sun 
does not reach it. In market gardens it is 
sown often between the rows of currant and 
gooseberry bushes, because it is not so 
parched up with the sun ; and if it be drawn 
a little, it is of no consequence. For the 
winter sort, the place cannot be too open. 
It wants all the sun and air it can get uninter- 
rupted ; and the ground must be kept very 
clear all about them. Some of the finest and 
thickest-leaved plants should be marked, for 
SAVING SEED. 
The plants left for seeding must be well 
hoed between and the surface stirred ; and 
a little earth drawn to the roots ; they will soon 
flower and seed. When the seed is approach- 
ing ripeness, the entire stem should be cut, 
and the whole dried in the shade under cover. 
It is as well not to sow the seed in the same 
place, as it occupied the season before ; be- 
cause all crops are better changed, and espe- 
cially when you save your own seed. 
CROSS BREEDING. 
Mant writers make a seeming mystery of 
this simple operation ; our object is to make 
our readers fully masters of the subject, and of 
the reasons why and the instances where it is 
desirable. Flowers have, for the most part, a 
portion connected with the seed vessels which 
would be perfectly useless, unless there were 
anthers, which hold the pollen, or powder, to 
communicate with it, and thus fertilize the 
seeds, which would otherwise be useless and 
baiTen, even if they grew at all. This por- 
tion, which is attached to the seed-vessel, 
becomes at a particular period of its growth 
sticky, and the powder which escapes from 
the anthers is retained by the glutinous por- 
tion, and every grain of powder forms a com- 
plete seed in itself, striking down an imper- 
ceptibly fine fibre, or root, into the vessel, and 
by the communication with the seed within 
renders it vital. Now the sporting of flowers 
