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.