Page:How and what to grow in a kitchen garden of one acre (IA howwhattogrowin00darl).pdf/112

 floor of a cool loft. When it becomes too cold to let them remain longer in this position without danger of freezing, I put them in peach baskets, the stripped sides of which allow a free circulation of air, and store them in a cool, well-ventilated cellar, where we try to keep the temperature just above freezing by admitting air whenever possible, as it takes but very little warmth to start them to growing, and then they soon become unfit for use. If the gardener saves his own seed, the finest and best-shaped onions should be laid aside for planting out in the spring, for this purpose.

Where the crop is raised from sets it is not necessary, though quite desirable, to have the soil made as fine as for the seed bed. As the small onions are set in, planting at the proper distances apart, almost all the cultivation can be done with the narrow onion hoe, and if it is regularly attended to at proper intervals no hand work is necessary. The onion is a hardy bulb, and the sets can be planted as soon in the spring as the ground can be gotten into proper condition; this makes an important feature in the earliness of the crop, as the sets have several weeks the start over the onions raised from seed. For the very earliest onions, or those used when the bulb and neck are about of equal thickness early in the spring, and which go by the name of scallions, the sets are planted in October and allowed to remain in the ground all winter, so that they are ready for use almost as soon as the spring opens, two weeks’ growth sufficing to bring them to a proper size. Where the main garden crop of these fragrant bulbs is raised