If garlic or onions are wanted to keep some time, the heads should be dipped in salt water, made luke-warm; by doing this, they will be all the better for keeping, though quite worthless for reproduction. Some persons content themselves with hanging them over burning coals, and are of opinion that this is quite sufficient to prevent them from sprouting: for it is a well-known fact, that both garlic and onions sprout when out of the ground, and that after throwing out their thin shoots they shrivel away to nothing. Some persons are of opinion, too, that the best way of keeping garlic is by storing it in chaff. There is a kind[1074] of garlic that grows spontaneously in the fields, and is known by the name of “alum.” To preserve the seeds that are sown there from the remorseless ravages of the birds, this plant is scattered over the ground, being first boiled, to prevent it from shooting. As soon as ever they have eaten of it, the birds become so stupefied as to be taken with the hand even,[1075] and if they remain but a few moments only on the spot, they fall fast asleep. There is a wild garlic, too, generally known as “bear’s” garlic;[1076] it has exactly the smell of millet, with a very small head and large leaves.
CHAP. 35. (7.)—THE NUMBER OF DAYS REQUIRED FOR THE RESPECTIVE PLANTS TO MAKE THEIR APPEARANCE ABOVE GROUND.
Among the garden[1077] plants which make their appearance most speedily above ground, are ocimum, blite, the turnip, and rocket; for they appear above the surface the third day after they are sown. Anise, again, comes up on the fourth day, the lettuce on the fifth, the radish on the sixth, the cucumber and the gourd on the seventh—the cucumber rather the first of the two—cresses and mustard on the fifth, beet on the sixth day in summer and the tenth in winter, orage on the eighth, onions on the nineteenth or twentieth, and scallions on the tenth or twelfth. Coriander, again, is more stubborn in its growth, cunila and wild marjoram do not appear till after the thirtieth day, and parsley comes up with the greatest difficulty of all, for at the very earliest it is forty days before it shows itself, and in most instances as much as fifty.
The age,[1078] too, of the seed is of some importance in this respect; for fresh seed comes up more rapidly in the case of the leek, the scallion, the cucumber, and the gourd, while in that of parsley, beet, cardamum, cunila, wild marjoram, and coriander, seed that has been kept for some time is the best.
There is one remarkable circumstance[1079] in connection with the seed of beet; it does not all germinate in the first year, but some of it in the second, and some in the third even; hence it is that a considerable quantity of seed produces only a very moderate crop. Some plants produce only in the year in which they are set, and some, again, for successive years, parsley, leeks, and scallions[1080] for instance; indeed, these plants, when once sown, retain their fertility, and produce for many years.
CHAP. 36.—THE NATURE OF THE VARIOUS SEEDS.
In most plants the seed is round, in some oblong; it is broad and foliaceous in some, orage for instance, while in others it is narrow and grooved, as in cummin. There are differences, also, in the colour of seeds, which is either black or white; while some seeds are woody and hard, in radishes, mustard, and rape, the seeds are enclosed in pods. In parsley, coriander, anise, fennel, and cummin, the seed has no covering at all, while in blite, beet, orage, and ocimum, it has an outer coat, and in the lettuce it is covered with a fine down. There is no seed more prolific than that of ocimum;[1081] it is generally recommended[1082] to sow it with the utterance of curses and imprecations, the result being that it grows all the better for it; the earth, too, is rammed down when it is sown, and prayers offered that the seed may never come up. The seeds which are enveloped in an outer coat, are dried with considerable difficulty, that of ocimum more particularly; hence it is that all these seeds are dried artificially, their fruitfulness being greatly promoted thereby.
Plants in general come up better when the seed is sown in heaps than when it is scattered broad-cast: leeks, in fact, and parsley are generally grown by sowing the seed in little bags;[1083] in the case of parsley, too, a hole is made with the dibble, and a layer of manure inserted.