The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-08-07

used for green, or bunch. onions "en l the White Portugal onions @ @ ,,,,.,h 1 sown In August arc gone. we nav .,,t,,, .ns
 to gain and but little to lose py u ,s s.l,y
 this plan. It will work all fisnl Ill
 seasons, at least
 The Disinfeetion of Vegetable seeds,-
 Some vears ago I began to suggest the i advisahilitv of washing some or our veg etabIe seeds, especially celery cappase, etc win A disinfeeting liquid. such as | a weak solution of copper sulphate' III
 order to kill the spores Of any ses,ni io ease with which they might possipls ,.4 | infected. This may have peeh 40 | of very litle practical account, ana d l not think that as a practice it has spread
 much or become general. In the s,uuy | of the black rot of cabbage carried oh
 by the botanical department or the Sen York State Experiment station at ueh eva. for some years black rot was louho fin the seed-bearing plants and the germ ca,,sing the disease was found present on the seed from such plants The uls- ease germs are considered to remain alive on the seed at least eleven months. When we plant cabbage seed, theretore' we must always reckon with the possi- bility that the seed may carry these germs, and we must be prepared in that case to see an outbreak of black rot among the pldllAo SlpNh AA'ft N--
 Washing the seed thoroughly before riantine with a weak solution of copper sulphate would probably free 1t from all Infection The New York station, however. recommend the soaking of the seed for fifteen minutes in one-to-one- thousand corrosive-sublimate solution or in a fourteen-per-cent formalin solution
 just before planting as a cheap and et- fective method of destroying germs upon the seed And while we are about it we
 might as we'll give to celery and onion seeds the same treatment If only on general principles" I am doing that now usually with my seed potatoes as a special treatment for scab infection.
 Onions From Sets-I do not think very highly of the method of using sets to grow early bunch onions. I have already told the readers of Farm and Preside that I usually grow good green onions in a much simpler way. and get them in the market much earlier in spring, by sowing seed of hardy sorts in the fall before Cor in the spring or summer be- fore. according to what kind of onions use). Yet there may be some need of sets in order to give us good green on- ions lust between those that I grow from seed sown in the fall and seed sown in the spring. For myself I shall try to get around the necessity of using the expen- sive set method altogether, and rely only on seedlings But if were to plant sets I would surely SOW the sets in light fur rows, such as can be made with a hand machine (the same as I use for making most of my rows for setting onion plants) rather than pick up each little set with the fingers to insert 1t in the row A reader asks me whether the onions are not liable to grow crooked if thus sown miscellaneously into a deeper furrow. have never noticed any such tendency generally. Sometimes few plants will grow crooked if they happen to fall top end downward in the furrow. But sow ing them saves so much time and labor that we can well risk the loss eff such 1t should prove to be) of a small percentage of the sets by the plants growing crooked Another Ohio reader asks how many sets It would take to plant an acre That depends altogether on the size of the sets, also on the way the sets are planted. Some sets are very small, not much bigger than wrinlSled peas. These are considered the best They may not make large green onions quite so quickly as larger sets, but they go much further In planting, and are not so liable to run to seed as the larger sets. Many gardners place the sets singly a few inches apart in the rows. In that case bushel may go four or five times as far in planting as sets that are Just sowed in furrows, perhaps one set to the inch of row, or even closer. Such plant ing will require quite number of bush els even when sets are small. It is an expensive method of growing green onions, the best you can say of 1t. This spring a neighbor bought a number of bushels of Ebenezer sets of small marble size paying seven dollars bushel.
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