Asparagus

No time should be lost in making new beds where required, either with plants or by sowing seed. If it were not for having to wait so long, the latter method makes the best bed: but as the former way enables us to cut from the next season, it is the most generally adopted. We recommend those who need only a small plantation to form it by planting strong roots, especially as a bed so made will, with proper care, last for many years. There is one thing I would impress upon those who intend planting roots - have them dug up fresh, as, if kept out of the ground for any length of time, they are bound to suffer in quality. Established beds must be properly dressed and cleaned.

Beans, Broad

These, if required, should be sown again as soon as the last sowing has got the second pair of leaves open. Sow them in rows to bloom where they come up; let the rows be two feet apart; earth up those which are growing fast.

Beans, Kidney Or Dwarf

Sow at once in rows two feet apart, and the seed four inches from each other in the rows.

Beet

Seed should be sown towards the end of the month on deeply-dug ground that has not been very recently manured, in drills fifteen inches asunder. For ordinary use, small, deep-coloured, well-shaped roots, are preferable to the larger kinds, and the former can alone be insured by the above treatment.

Broccoli

Another sowing of some of the principal kinds, which must be of the early class, should be made at once. A good seed-bed is indispensable, if you desire your plants to grow well from the first, for if starved at the beginning they will never make strong, healthy stock. In late districts late sorts may be sown now; but in the midlands, and similar districts, there is no immediate hurry.

Cabbages

A few of the smaller kinds should be sown for planting out as spaces become vacant, and some of the larger roots for autumn use. Plant out from the seed-beds such plants as are strong enough for the purpose, in rows eighteen inches apart, and a foot asunder in the rows.

Cardoons

Seed may be sown at once on well-manured ground, in rows from four to five feet apart, to be thinned out as soon as large enough to eighteen inches asunder in the rows; or it may be sown on a small bed, broadcast, and when large enough pricked out five or six inches from each other in every direction, to strengthen previous to transplanting.

Carrots

Sow the main crop towards the end of the month on a bed the soil of which is deep, generous, and rather sandy, in drills one foot apart, and as soon as the plants are of a sufficient size, thin them out to six inches apart, first of all, and eventually to one foot asunder in the rows.

Cauliflowers

Let these be planted out whenever the weather is favourable to the work; that is to say, select warm, showery weather for the operation, if possible. The plants should be put out in rows from two and a half to three feet apart, and the same distance from each other in the rows. To produce tender and handsome heads, it is necessary to manure the ground abundantly, digging it deeply at the same time. Should the weather be cold it will be necessary to protect them for a time with hand-glasses, or inverted flower-pots - to be left on all night, if necessary.

Celery

This seed may be sown now in the open ground, provided you select for it a bed of well-rotted manure in a warm corner. This method of sowing is decidedly the best, if it can be managed, as the plants then receive no check, and consequently they will be just in the right condition for planting out as soon as the trenches are ready for them. If you have any plants in the seed-pan, prick them out at once on a bed of. rotten manure, on a hard bottom, that can be protected by a frame until such time as they have established themselves.

Cucumbers

We have said very little about these as yet, considering that the present time is quite early enough. Under a common garden light this plant may be grown in perfection. Make up a heap of three or four barrows of hot dune, cover it with three inches of mould, put on a hand-glass, and sow your seeds in pots, two in a pot; cover close, that the steam of the dung may not get inside the glass - there will be heat enough here to grow the seeds; meanwhile, drive four stakes down into the ground to form a square, one foot larger every way than the frame is wide; take out hot stable dung, and pile it up so as to build this square three feet high behind, or north-east, and two feet six inches in front, or south-west, putting it close with the dung-fork through the whole progress of the work, the top being left a flat slope; then put on the garden frame on the centre, and the light upon it, the low part of the frame upon the lowest part of the dung; poke a stick into the dung as far as you can, and leave it there; by pulling this out now and then, and returning it, you can always feel the real heat of the centre. "When the rank steam is gone your seeds will he well up under the hand-glass in the other dung, and the pots may he removed into the bed; hut about two inches of mould should be put all over the dung inside the frame, to keep the steam down and the bed sweet; the pot or pots of seedlings may stand in the frame till they get four rough leaves, when the ends must be pinched off, to make them throw out lateral shoots.