The first main reason is that the springs are short. Winter hovers around and April frosts are by no means rare. Along the border pf Kiangsu and Shantung it has been found by long experience that it is of little use to attempt any open aingardening before the first of May except for such hardy things as pens and corn. Lettuce, beets, spinach, cabbage aiid tomatoes may come up if planted out of doors but they will be 0 dwarfed by the cold that later plantings will quickly overtake them. These deicate seeds must be planted in a hot bed under glass and carefully sheltered until set out in the open garden early in May.
Then the weather becomes warn> very rapidly and by the end of May we are in actual summer weather. After the Inst week in May small reeds planted out of doors are literally roasted by the hot sun and many fail to come up at all. Those that do come up have the summer' rains to fight while'they are yet only an inch or two above ground. The contest is cruelly unequal. The rain falls in torrents, beating the tender plants down to the ground. If they weather the rain, the winds batter them to pieces and if they survive both, the fierce heat of the sun literally stews them into nothing-
Under such conditions a suecession of crops might well be called an impossibility and the only formula to follow something like this: get your early crops and then go without, But there out, a solution that is the' ideal plan under ide tions. It has succeeded beautifully in many cases already and is worth any gardenct's trial. Briefly it is this:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.