PLANTS FOR INDIVIDUAL PLOTS
The pupils of this Form should not attempt to grow more than two varieties of flowers and two of vegetables. Of flowers, mixed asters and Shirley poppy are to be recommended, the poppy being an early blooming flower and the aster late blooming. Carrots and radishes are desirable vegetables, as the carrot matures late and the radish early. Two or three crops of radishes may be grown on the same ground in one season. Besides these, a few others should be chosen for special study, such as the potato, onion, corn, and sunflower.
STUDIES BASED ON OBSERVATIONS OF GROWING PLANTS
Attention should be given to the growing habits of plants, the size and rate of development, the method of multiplying and propagation, and the part used for food. The potato is a tuber which is nothing more than the swollen end of an underground stem; the onion a bulb composed of the bases of thickened leaves; the corn an example of a jointed stem or grass having two kinds of flowers, the tassels being the staminate flowers and the cob with its silk the pistillate ones; the sunflower an example of a compound flower made up of many little flowers each of which produces a single seed.
Observations should also be made upon the progress in germination of the nuts and other tree seeds collected in the fall. When the seeds fall from the elms and soft maples in the spring, some of them should be collected and planted in the forestry plot, or nursery.
PLANTING AND CARE OF SWEET-PEAS
1. Sow as early as possible in spring.
2. Sow on well-drained land and never in the shade or near grass. Grass roots rob the sweet-pea roots of water.
3. Use a small amount of fertilizer—well-rotted manure spaded deeply into the soil. This is best done in the autumn.
4. Make the trench in the fall about five or six inches deep.