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Radishes

Radishes are wonderful helps to mark the rows of slow sprouting seeds. Buy this seed by the quarter  pound or pound of some rapid-forcing variety, sift out  and discard the smallest seeds or sow them by themselves because they are slower to sprout, to develop  and they make poorer radishes. Use only the large  ones as row markers. Any excess seed not used in one  season may be kept until the next; for radish seed kept  in a dry place will sprout well when five or even more  years old. 

Radish seedlings appear in four or five days after sowing the seed. Because of this and also because because their seed leaves are broad and relatively big  they show where they are two or three weeks before  such slow sprouting seeds as parsley, parsnip, carrot  or such small leaved kinds as onions, leeks and as- paragus seedlings can be seen without stooping. 

By sowing radish seed in the same rows with these slow-growing and small-leaved vegetables one can see  within a week where the rows really are and can begin  to cultivate at once. The greatest advantage of this  early cultivation is that weeds are killed while they  are so small that they have no chance to do damage to  the crops. 

Radishes produced by the large, sifted seed reach edible size all about the same time and may be  gathered within four weeks of the sowing, provided  they are of a forcing variety. During this time the  seed of the other crops will germinate. When the radishes are removed weeds in the rows may also be  pulled, the permanent crops be given their first thinning and the blanks filled with seedlings transplanted  from other parts of the rows. 

One caution is necessary in addition to choosing a quick maturing variety: Sow the seed very thinly. Try  to drop the seeds not closer than 2" apart, preferably  3" so that should the plants accidentally be 1" apart  you need not fear damage to the plants which are to  occupy the ground after the radishes have been removed. 

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