CHAPTER XII
QUANTITY OF SEED REQUIRED
For those vegetables of which only a small quantity is grown the packets will be ample, most packets giving from one to two hundred plants, when started in the hotbed.
CHAPTER XIII
SWEET, POT AND MEDICINAL HERBS
Are a very welcome addition to the kitchen garden, giving just the often needed touch to the achievement of a successful dish, a touch that will change an everyday vegetable or meat course to something unusual and fancy in cuisine, and with no trouble or added expense to the cook—just a little pinch of this or that, and what a difference it makes! In most households sage is depended on for the flavoring of poultry dressing, sausage and the like, in spite of the fact that it may be anything but pleasing to some member of the family or the welcome guest; so accustomed are we to its use that substitution is scarcely thought of, and yet a very pleasing one is found in summer savory, which most people like better than sage, once its acquaintance is made. Coriander and caraway seeds are used in bread, cake and cookies, but just a touch of caraway is a very piquant addition to salads. Tarragon is used for making tarragon vinegar—the leaves being steeped in pale cider or white wine vinegar until the flavor is extracted and then used in the concoction of salad dressing. Dill is used principally for making dill pickles, the leaves being laid alternately with the pickles when laid down. Sweet fennel is used for salads and soups and also for fish sauce.
If one has a strip of land at one side of the garden that is not needed, and can be conveniently skipped in the plowing, that will be the place for the herb bed. The soil should be rich and mellow and contain a fair proportion of humus. A poor strip of land may be built up by adding to it from season to season the old manure from the hotbed; this is nearly reduced to humus and the action of the elements will soon complete its transformation.