The baby begins to eat the food its mother put inside the seed coat; it stretches itself, and pretty soon sends down into the earth a “teeny-weeny” rootlet. This rootlet takes a little food from the earth up to the baby. Oh, yes, plant soup, that is the kind of food it takes. Plant soup is mixed earth and water. How good it is for the plant child, depends on how sweet the soil is, and how much humus or compost or manure food is in the soup. Humus soup tastes wonderfully good to the baby plant. COTYLEDONS Well, not only does the baby plant send down this tiny rootlet, but its tiny stem grows upward, and bursts through the seed coats and show two tiny leaves. The two tiny leaves which appear on top of this stem, while down in the soil grew larger, threw open the seed coat, and came up to the surface for the air and sunshine. These leaves are called the seed-leaves, or cŏt-ŷ-lē´-dŏns. They are not the true leaves of the plant baby, but are nurse-leaves which go ahead of the leaves of the baby plant, and really hold the true leaf of the baby between them. These nurse-leaves take care of and feed the tiny plant baby until it can send out its own tiny leaves to gather air and digest food for itself. If you pull up a Lima Bean Seed Baby after it has started to grow you will see the nurse-leaves. No plant should be moved or transplanted until at least two true leaves, or leaves of its own, not nurse-leaves (cotyledons), have appeared. Of course, when the little plants first come up there will be so many that each will choke the other, and so we must learn about— THINNING OUT THE PLANTS When the little plants are about two inches high, pull up all the weak plants, leaving the stronger ones from one to six inches apart, according to the kind of plants. The little plants will need moisture, too—not just “watering,” but the moisture which lies far beneath the surface, and which can only be had by keeping the surface soil in good condition, so as when the plants grow one of the most important things we have to learn to do is— TO CULTIVATE “Cultivating” means breaking up the soil where it hardens about the plant. _It is the most important part of gardening_ after planting, except “thinning out.” Cultivating is done by use of the hoe and “cultivator,” the rake-like tool which has but few prongs. Draw the cultivator between the rows of plants every day or two. Use the hoe in smaller spaces. Use the hoe to chop down weeds below the surface of the ground, being careful not to cut into the roots of the garden plants.