War Gardens: A Pocket Guide for Home Vegetable GrowersFree, Montague
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War Gardens: A Pocket Guide for Home Vegetable Growers
Free, Montague
Vegetable gardening
A deep, loamy soil is most suited for the production of parsnips. In a
shallow soil the roots are likely to be stunted and misshapen. The
following method of producing extra-large and well-shaped roots is
sometimes used by exhibitors of vegetables. Holes about two feet deep
and three inches in diameter at the top are made in the ground with a
crowbar at intervals of about nine inches. These holes are filled with
sifted fertile earth, and three or four seeds planted in each. When the
seedlings appear, all but the strongest are pulled out. This method is
only to be recommended when it is desired to walk off with the prize for
the best parsnips at the county fair or the town vegetable show. _Hollow
Crown_ is a good variety.
Peas are essentially a cool-weather crop, and they especially resent
hot, dry conditions at the root. For this reason the seeds should be
planted just as soon as the ground is workable in the spring. The dwarf
varieties can be planted in double rows about six inches apart, leaving
a space of eighteen inches or two feet between each double row. The tall
varieties, which need support of some kind, may be planted in the same
way, but a space varying from three to five feet must be allowed between
the rows, according to the height of the variety planted. The taller the
variety, the greater is the necessity for ample space between the rows.
It is said to be possible to produce a crop of peas in the fall by
sowing the seeds in August, but the writer has never seen much success
attained with a crop at this season; at any rate, not in the vicinity of
New York. For a late crop of peas it is advisable to dig a trench from
six to eight inches deep and sow the seeds in this, covering them with
two inches of soil, as usual. Water them thoroughly if the weather is
dry. As the plants grow the earth should be gradually drawn into the
trench until it is filled up to the surrounding level. This system is
adopted so that the roots may be well down in the earth and thus
protected from the hot rays of the sun. This is also a good method to
adopt for late spring plantings of peas.
A fairly fertile, loamy soil, well drained, but of a retentive nature,
is most suited to peas.
_First of All_, thirty inches high, is a good variety of the
smooth-seeded type of pea. This type does not possess such a good flavor
as the wrinkled-seeded kinds, but the seeds are not likely to rot if
planted in cold, wet soil. _Nott’s Excelsior_ is an excellent dwarf
variety of the wrinkled-seed type. Of the tall kinds, _Alderman_, five
feet in height, _Gradus_, thirty inches, and _Champion of England_, five
feet, are to be recommended.
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