Part 43

JULY

=Plot A.=--Keep weeded, water celery, and look out for celery fly.

=Plot B.=--Clear off broad beans and early peas the moment they are done. Sow two rows of turnip, and put out couve tronchuda, savoy, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, early and late spring broccoli, as soon as room can be made for them. A row of chicory can either be sown or pricked out in this plot this month.

=Plot C.=--Dig the whole crop of potatoes without waiting for the haulm to die down, somewhere between the 10th and 20th, store the potatoes and tread the ground round the brassicas.

=Seed Bed.=--Plant out lettuce and sow more. Sow endive and chicory, and about the 24th sow flower of spring cabbage.

AUGUST

=Plot A.=--Towards the end of the month the onions may be ready to harvest; if so, get them up, also the carrots and beet, though the last may have to wait till September. Follow the onions with spring cabbage, and the carrots with chicory, planted out, and endive. The celery will probably be ready for a first slight earthing up.

=Plot B.=--Clear the latest peas away, and immediately follow them with endive, chicory, and lettuce from the seed bed. As soon as established give the lettuce a slight dressing of nitrate of soda, it makes all the difference to the quality of autumn lettuce; the endive also will be improved by similar treatment. If desired a sowing of turnips may be made here at this time.

=Plot C.=--Keep this plot and the rest of the ground clear of weeds; use the Dutch hoe.

=Seed Bed.=--Sow more spring cabbage, endive, and Tripoli onions.

SEPTEMBER

=Plot A.=--Harvest onions, carrots, and beet, if not already done. Follow the onions with spring cabbage, the roots with endive and chicory. Continue to earth up the celery, in many seasons the final earthing may be done by the end of this month.

=Plot B.=--Earth up the leeks with the hoe.

=Plot C.=--Keep this and the other plots well weeded.

=Frames.=--Fill one frame with lettuce and endive.

=Seed Bed.=--Prick out a few more dwarf lettuce and a few endive. Blanch endive, a few at a time.

OCTOBER

=Plot A.=--Finish earthing up all celery.

=Plot B.=--Keep weeded; blanch endive.

=Plot C.=--Keep weeded.

=Frames.=--Fill a second frame with endives.

NOVEMBER

Culture has now ceased for the growing crops, beyond keeping them weeded. Endive must be blanched, and the frames kept open as far as the weather will permit. Begin to blanch chicory, clean up rhubarb, seakale, and asparagus, and mulch the plants.

DECEMBER

=Plot B.=--The turnips will be off the ground, so will the couve tronchuda and savoys before the end of the month, if possible trench the onion bed for next season. Clean up all weedy corners. Continue to blanch chicory and endive.

This, or a slightly modified scheme, will be found to hold good for a smaller plot of ground, even in such a small plot as is sketched in Plan II the same methods will obtain. In this plan the asparagus has been sacrificed, so have artichokes, but the latter could be substituted for seakale, if desired. Beyond some cramping of the ground the plots will carry nearly as many, though shorter, rows as in the larger scheme. Possibly in Plot A the same number of rows could be grown by slightly contracting the space between the celery trenches, and by allowing only nine inches between the rows of root crops. This is perfectly sound practice if only care is taken to thin the plants so that those in adjacent rows do not come opposite each other, but opposite the centre of the intervals between their neighbours.

In Plot B one row of peas would have to be sacrificed, and in Plot C one row of potatoes and one of Brussels sprouts must go, but there will be plenty of vegetables for a family of four, and probably enough potatoes to last till Christmas.

This scheme of successive cropping will be found to be sound roughly south of the Trent, but for northern and colder districts it would have to be modified. With some modification as to the time of sowing, Plots A and C would broadly stand as arranged, but Plot B would have its times of sowing much later, the peas would have to be at least three feet six inches apart, to make room for the winter and spring greens, which would have to go out between the rows before the peas were off the ground, and it is probable that all brassicas for winter and early spring would be better sown in a cold frame.