Open Crops

Source: The Book Of Sports
Category: GARDENING.



In the sowing of open crops, care should also be taken to sow at the
proper time. Very early sowing is generally hazardous, but yet, if you
would have your crops come in soon, a little risk must be run. When seed
is sown in the open ground, it requires watching, and this particularly
applies to such crops as early potatoes or beans. Sometimes potatoes are
sown in February, with the view to an early crop; and in April the young
tender sprouts appear above the ground. One night's frost, however,
settles them,--down they go, black and jelly-like to the earth; but if
the weather be doubtful, the thoughtful young gardener takes care to
cover up the tender shoots with dry leaves or straw, to break the icy
tooth of the frost, and save his crop. The same care should be also
bestowed upon any other vegetable of a tender kind, and without this
care, gardening would come to nothing.

After seeds are sown, they have many natural enemies. The slug, the
snail, the wire-worm, the impudent sparrow, and the most impudent and
insolent chaffinch, who all seem to have an idea that the seed is put
into the ground entirely for their benefit. As soon as the pea-shoot
comes above the earth, the slug has a mouthful in its tenderest moments;
after the shoot has in part recovered from the gentle nibble, Master
Sparrow swoops down and picks off, as quick as he can, all the delicate
little sprouts by mouthfuls: to make a fit ending to what is so well
begun, the chaffinch descends in the most impudent manner, close to your
face, and pulls up stalk and pea both together, and flies away as
unconcerned as can be. Now it is of no use to stand with a gun or a pair
of clappers in your hand all the day after these intruders, and the only
protection is by a net, or rows of twine strung with feathers, stretched
over the bed in rows, and a few other pieces of white twine crosswise in
their immediate vicinity. Birds do not like the look of any threads
drawn across the ground, and they will rarely fly where there appears
danger of entanglement; and this method is the best that can be adopted
for seed-beds. A _Guy_ is also good; and there are few boys who do not
know how to construct one. A _Guy_ is also particularly appropriate for
the _early Warwick peas_. As to slugs and caterpillars, they must be
hunted for and picked off; and if they abound in a garden, the line of
shooting peas, beans, or other seed, must be dredged with a little
slacked lime, which is an infalliable mode of protection. But mind the
lime does not blow into your eyes; for, if it does, you will be worse
off than the caterpillars.

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