The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1317 
Ruralisms 
Looking Ahead for the Hotbed 
Materials Requircd. — I stated in a 
previous article that the growing of 
vegetable plants is a paying proposition. 
Just think for a moment how many peo¬ 
ple around you have to buy their vege¬ 
table plants, such as tomato, eggplants, 
peppers, cabbage and sweet potato, and 
how far do you have to go to get such 
plants? At a very small cost one can 
be equipped with the necessary sash, 
boards for beds and mats for covering 
sash. Four beds 6x15 ft. are sufficient 
for starting the young plants; then a cold 
frame GxGO ft. (or two 6x30 El. are more 
convenient) for transplanting and hard¬ 
ening the tomato and cabbage plants, 
which will take 40 sash in all: eight 1G- 
ft. boards for top sides, 1 ft. wide, and 
eight 16-ft. boards S in. wide for bot¬ 
tom side, and six 12-ft. boards (cut in 
half) 1 ft. wide for ends, and 20 straw 
mats 6x6 ft., at a cost of about $200 for 
top 4 to 6 in. Do not start the hotbeds 
too early, or you will have the plants too 
tall and spindly before they be trans¬ 
planted into cold frames or flats for mar¬ 
ket. Put hot manure in the first pit 
March 1. On March 10 sow one sash of 
Earliftna, one sash Dwarf Stone, and one 
sash of Bonnie Best tomato seed, and 
two sashes of Charleston Wake field cab¬ 
bage. This will complete the first pit. 
As soon as the seed is up. take a sharp 
stick and begin to work the earth be¬ 
tween the rows, on a warm, pleasant day. 
After the plants are 2 in. high, a dividing 
board is put between.the tomato and cab¬ 
bage plants, as the cabbage will need 
more air. On March 10 put manure in 
second pit. and on March 20 sow three 
sash with Stone, one sash Ponderosa and 
one sash of Matchless tomato seed. On 
March 20 put manure in third pit. and 
on March 30 sow three sash of Ruby 
Giant pepper and two sash of New York 
Pumpkin Vine 120 Ft. in Circumference 
the entire outfit. The pit for the hotbeds 
should be dug 6x15 ft. and IS in. deep, 
then set your posts, to nail the boards on 
for the frame, so that they will be 8 in. 
at the top and 4 in. at the bottom above 
the level of the ground. 
Preparing Son..—It will take about 
two tons of fresh stable manure for each 
bed. If there is little heat in the manure, 
pile it up and wet with hot water, which 
will soon start it to heating. When it is 
steaming hot. put it in the pit and tramp 
it down until it is well packed, then put 
on about 10 pails of water, then 4 to 6 
in. of very fine, rich earth. This earth 
should be prepared the year previous, aud 
covered with sash or straw, so that it 
will not be frozen when wanted for the 
beds in March, The best way to prepare 
this earth is to fork over tin? manure, in 
one of the pits, after the plants have been 
removed in the Spring, then put in two 
loads of top earth, and fork it over until 
it is very fine. After putting this earth 
on the hot manure, smooth it off until it 
is perfectly level, so that when the young 
plants are watered it won’t all run to <the 
bottom of the bed and make that too wet, 
while the upper part is not wet enough. 
Then put on the sash, and let the bed 
heat up. After the first heat is spent, 
which will be in about 10 days, remove 
the sash, give the earth a thorough rak¬ 
ing so as to kill the weed seed that has 
germinated, level the bed and sow the 
One Pumpkin Vine Yielded 31 Fruits 
seed thinly* in rows 4 in. apart and about 
:i i in. deep, cover seed, and firm the 
ground by slapping it lightly with the 
board with which you make the rows. 
This board should be about 544 in. wide, 
with a sharp edge on one side, so that 
when this sharp edge is placed on the bed 
to mark <>ut the rows, as it is worked 
back and forth it will make the row at a 
uniform depth in which to sow the seed. 
Sowing tit.: Seed. —After sowing the 
seed put on the sash, and cover the sash 
at night with mats, so as to retain the 
heat. The temperature at first should be 
about 80*. After the seed is up. it should 
be reduced to GO 0 . They must not. be 
kept too warm or the plants will become 
too leggy. The heat can be easily regu¬ 
lated by pushing the sash down from the 
eggplant seed. On March 30 put manure 
in fourth pit aud on April 10 put in two 
bushels of yellow and two bushels of red 
sweet potatoes. Cover sweets very lightlv 
with sand, and after they begin to sprout 
wet thoroughly and cover with 4 in. more 
of sand. This will complete the 20 sash 
of hotbeds. 
Early Plants.— About April 1 the 
early tomato plants will be reudv to 
transplant in cold frame to harden off. 
A warm, cloudy day, is best for this kind 
of work. For doing this work, put a 
piece of stick 144x3 in., 5% ft. long. 
Nail 17 sharp pieces of sticks at equal 
distances apart to the 5%-ft. piece, so 
that they project about 4~iu. Dig and 
rake the earth in the cold frame, which 
will be quite warm from having the sash 
on at least a month before the young 
plants are set. and in most cases the sash 
are kept on these frames all Winter so 
that the frost does not get very deep in 
the ground during the most severe Win¬ 
ters we have. Press the dihbers firmlv in 
the ground, which will make 17 holes at 
one time about 2 in. deep. Each sash 
will hold It) rows, making 170 plants un¬ 
der each sash. Have about 2 in. of 
warm water in a pail, pull handfuls of 
young plants out of the seed bed, place 
roots in the water, and then transplant 
in cold frame. These young plants will 
need covering of the sash with mats for 
a few days from about 0 a. m. until 3 
p. in. to keep out the hot sun. The sash 
will also need to he covered every night 
to keep them from freezing. After the 
plants are rooted, give them plenty of air. 
by shoving down the sash from the top 
of bed. 
Car rage Plants.— The cabbage plants 
need not be transplanted, hut can be sold 
direct from seed bed, excepting those trans- 
plantedjnto fiats for the store trade. Those 
fiats, 15x24 in.. 4 in. deep, hold about 150 
plants each. After these tints are set full 
of plants (tomato and cabbage), they are 
set in the hotbeds where the tomato 
plants were pulled, as these beds have 
quite some heat in them yet. and plants 
set in flats need a little bottom heat to 
strike root quickly. After a week, re¬ 
move flats to cold frame and sow these 
hotbeds again to Stone tomato seed. The 
second week in April the three sashes of 
Slone. Ponderosa and Matchless plants 
will be ready to transplant into cold 
trame and flats. Where these plants are 
removed, transplant the eggplant. 4 in. 
apart each way. The peppers will not 
need transplanting, only in flats for store 
trade. 
1 hero is a very large demand from the 
stores m any town or city for all kinds of 
vogoinhlfc plants, and I find it impossible, 
with the beds 1 have mentioned in this 
article, to meet the demand in a small 
lown tor the various kinds of plants, not¬ 
withstanding six or eight men who raise 
plants for the same market. The space 
of ground required for these beds is not 
very large, and I sell approximately everv 
year $.100 Worth of plants from' them, 
l lie accompanying pictures show one 
pumpkin vine which came up in my hot¬ 
bed after the plants were removed. The 
other cut shows one end of hotbed, sash 
piled for Summer season, with different 
size markers. william perkins. 
There’s no lead in a 
lead pencil 
Y OU use a pencil frequently. You call it a lead 
pencil. 
But it isn’t a lead pencil — for there isn’t any lead 
in it. 
What is called lead, in a pencil, is graphite, and 
graphite is carbon. 
Now think of something as familiar as your pencil, 
and which really does contain lead. 
Do you think of your coffee cup? Your bathtub? 
Your rubber boots? The tires on your automobile? 
Your fountain pen? 
There’s lead in all of them. The glaze of your cup 
contains lead, so does the porcelain finish of your tub 
—there’s lead in the rubber that’s in your tires and 
your rubber boots and your fountain pen. 
Lead is so useful in so many ways that it gets into 
a surprising number of different articles and products 
that add to the comfort of civilized life. 
There is one use of lead that is more important than 
all the others. Wherever you may be at the instant 
you read this—whether indoors or outdoors—you can 
almost certainly see and touch the most important of 
all lead products—paint. 
¥ a 
Everywhere people are learning that a painted sur¬ 
face is a protected surface, and that an unpainted 
surface is an invitation to deterioration and decay. 
“Save the surface and you save all” has become a 
national slogan. 
White-lead is the principal factor in good paint, and 
white-lead is pure metallic lead, corroded, and mixed 
with linseed oil. Think for just one minute of the 
painted surfaces, large or small, which you look at 
every day, from skyscrapers down to the numbers on 
a freight car—and you will begin to form some idea 
of the vast quantities of metallic lead that are used 
in making the white-lead which enters into good paint. 
White-lead gives to paint its durability and work¬ 
ing qualities. Some manufactured paints contain 
more white-lead than others—but all good paint con¬ 
tains some white-lead. Painters generally use straight 
“lead-and-oil,” which is white-lead thinned by the 
addition of pure linseed oil. They know that this kind 
of paint gives satisfaction because it looks so well and 
lasts so long. 
National Lead Company makes white-lead of the 
highest quality, and sells it, mixed with pure linseed 
oil, under the name and trademark of 
Dutch Boy White-Lead 
Write to our nearest branch office, address Department G. 
for a free copy of our “Wonder Book of Lead,” which interest¬ 
ingly describes the hundred-and-one ways in which lead enters 
into the daily life of everyone. 
NATIONAL LEAD COMPANY 
New York Boston Cincinnati San Francisco 
Cleveland Buffalo Chicago St. Louis 
JOHN T. LEWIS & BROS. CO., Philadelphia 
NATIONAL LEAD ik OIL CO., Pittsburgh 
Some Products Made by National Lead Company 
Dutch Boy White-Lead 
Lead Castings 
Dutch Boy Red-Lead 
Sugar of Lead 
Dutch Boy Linseed Oil 
Lead Weights 
Dutch Boy Flatting Oil 
Calking Lead 
1 Dutch Boy Babbitt Metals 
Lead Washers 
Dutch Boy Solders 
Music Plates 
Lead Hammers 
Pinking Blocks 
