These nurse-leaves take care of and feed the tiny plant baby until it can send out its own tiny leaves to gather air and digest food for itself.
If you pull up a Lima Bean Seed Baby after it has started to grow you will see the nurse-leaves.
No plant should be moved or transplanted until at least two true leaves, or leaves of its own, not nurse-leaves (cotyledons), have appeared.
Of course, when the little plants first come up there will be so many that each will choke the other, and so we must learn about—
Thinning Out the Plants
When the little plants are about two inches high, pull up all the weak plants, leaving the stronger ones from one to six inches apart, according to the kind of plants.
The little plants will need moisture, too—not just “watering,” but the moisture which lies far beneath the surface, and which can only be had by keeping the surface soil in good condition, so as when the plants grow one of the most important things we have to learn to do is—
