1S77.] 
ECONOMY OF SPACE IN SMALL GAEDENS. 
83 
wliicli are sent out at a stiffish price, very soon get hybridised and mixed, and then 
disappear as distinctive kinds in collections. I find the best and safest mode in 
Melon culture is to keep growing only the particular varieties found suitable for 
early and late bearing, free in setting, and of good flavour. To keep the seed of 
such kinds true to name, I grow a plant of each in a pot, and when they are setting 
their fruit, keep them isolated from one another. It is well known that it is quite 
a lottery to get Melons always of good flavour, for the same sorts differ much 
according to the season, soil, or treatment they have received. Perhaps the 
best test is to cut them before being quite ripe, and use them as soon as the stalk 
parts freely from the fruit. 
With regard to Cucumber-growing, the new varieties now sent out yearly are 
but little in advance of older sorts, being recommended principally by their size 
and shape. For show purposes, these kinds are, no doubt, desirable, but for eat¬ 
ing or stewing, such varieties as Iiollisson‘’s Telegraph and those of the Sion House 
section are to be preferred. Cucumbers of from 12 in. to 15 in. in length when 
young are quite long enough for use, and there is no waste from seeds ; and they 
can be grown in this section as plentifully in the winter as in summer, in a properly 
constructed pit or house. 
Some gardeners, I have no doubt, are in the habit, like me, of raising every 
spring an extra supply of Cucumber-plants to replenish their neighbours’ or the 
cottagers’ frames. I find they all ask now for the prolific short-growing kinds, as 
they can grow more fruit from them than they used to do when they tried growing 
longer varieties.— William Tillery, Welhech. 
ECONOMY OF SPACE IN SMALL GAEDENS. 
|N large gardens, where practical men of experience conduct the business, 
every pole of ground is. turned to the best account, some being marked for 
two crops a year, and all told off for one heavy return of, say, ten, twenty, 
or even a hundredfold. But in the artisan’s small patch of garden-ground, 
where heavy returns are most needed, we see both time and space wasted. Eighty 
or ninety days after Lady Day will give a crop of table Peas, and less time will 
mature a crop of Cauliflowers. Early Potatos will bo fit for the table long before 
the ninety days are come and gone. Lettuce-plants run rapidly into use ; boiled 
Lettuce is a tender vegetable, and as the plant has only to form leaves it comes 
early to perfection. So much for the reckoning as to time, and now for economy 
in space. 
If we were to ask the farmer why he does not sow three seeds where he now sows 
only one, he would smile at our simplicity, and say that his crop would be less 
by so doing, and the quality would also be inferior. Flax is sown thick that the 
crop may be drawn up manifold and slender, as it is grown by the manufacturer 
for the fibre of its straw; but even flax has its limits, and requires a certain 
amount of space to develop its character. Now whilst all our kitchen-garden 
crops require room to grow and come to perfection, our aim should be to give 
