AMONG market gardeners winter spinach is an important crop requiring careful preparation of soil, good seed, timely sowing, in a suitable place for withstanding exposure of winter. If successfully wintered it is very profitable. Spinach is used as a second crop. I plant it after early beets, early cucumbers, early cabbage, beans and early corn. The middle of August to the first of September is my range for planting the seed. After repeated trials I have chosen the Viro-flay (Henderson) or the Savoy-leaved for fall sowing, and try to get the seed fresh. Ten pounds to the acre is not too much. I do not think it possible to over-feed the spinach crop with manure. The first sown seed will make spinach for fall use ; or if in a favorable locality it will keep over winter. I think it is still a disputed point among our most successful gardeners whether the three-quarter or the one-quarter grown spinach is the most likely to withstand the winter. The largest grown killed last winter in some fields and lived in others.

So also, the plants which only appeared above ground with two leaves in the fall came out all right in spring, as fine as the best spring sown, and two weeks earlier.

I have experimented with coverings of various kinds ; leaves, hay, corn stalks, tomato vines, and pine bought. To place any covering is a work of time, and most cultivators seek, by planting large areas, in the most favorable spots, to secure some success in wintering without covering. The pine boughs have yielded the best shelter. Land laid out in beds four feet wide, with a deep furrow between, affords good surface drainage. The lightest lands, those earliest and driest in spring, are the best.

I have seen a slight depression in an area otherwise well drained holding water to the depth of two inches, and the spinach was killed. Frequent freezings and thawings do not seem to damage the plant as a cold water bath does in winter. The Prickly-seeded spinach is recommended for winter, but I always plant the Round-seeded. It passes through the seed drill much better and is as sure to live over winter as any.

The past two seasons have been unusually favorable for wintering spinach in this locality, for though the land has not been covered with snow, there have been also times when the frost has left the soil, allowing the spinach to grow in winter. We are still at a loss to know how to keep fall spinach that is large enough to market when winter sets in and snow falls. We have tried cutting and spreading, and partly drying, but such samples rot; storing in a dark cool cellar with the same result, the leaves turning yellow in two weeks ; cutting into barrels and freezing till wanted, but this did not work. Two weeks is the limit of its life after cutting.

The cost of preparing the land in favorable weather is little, and the cost of the seed in bulk being about fifteen cents a pound, the whole cost of preparing and sowing an acre need not exceed five dollars. Planted in freshly plowed and damp soil, it comes up at once. Dry weather is almost fatal to the seed, and if sown then it should be tread down in the rows with the feet. One of my neighbors will not plant before a hard shower, or long rain, as he thinks the seed will not come up. I have not verified this. Here we practice drill sowing, not broadcasting. It should be hoed in fall to keep down the weeds which will start if the land is in good heart - and spinach should be sown on no other soil. Hampden Co., Mass W. H. Bull.