SUMMER SALADS

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 5, 1 November 1924, Page 42

SUMMER SALADS

ALWAYS GREEN AND FRESH

A few feet of ground will suffice for work like this, and a child could do it successfully. In any family the provision of salads might he made the consideration of pocket-money for Young Hopeful.

1 N Summertime the value of fresh, green, uncooked vegetables can scarcely be over estimated. Their crisp coolness is peculiarly gratifying to our parched palates, and they afford to our enervated systems a natural restorative which no cooked vegetable can supply. Fresh cut from our garden, they retain in perfect, unaltered condition the natural salts of the plant. A plentiful supply of such food would obviate entirely recourse to those artificial remedies which, unfortunately, are most commonly resorted to by a great majority of the people. To procure these salad plants, make beds raised an inch or two above the paths, and about three feet wide. The beds should be well enriched with rotten manure, and be made light in character with, if necessary, the addition of sand and leaf mould. Sow such a bed with all kinds of plants suitable for salads, covering the seeds lightly and pressing the covering down. The bed should be moist when the seed is sown; a thorough watering the day before the seed is sown is the best course to pursue. After sowing, give a light sprinkling of water through a very fine rose, and cover the bed with some shading material, or with* a frame. When the plants show through the soil sift over them at weekly intervals a thin layer of fine horse manure, and keep the bed moist by a good watering every day. The plants will make rapid succulent growth, and they must be used when in their young state, as at this time of the year the warmth of the atmosphere will cause them to go rapidly to seed. A succession of such sowings can be made throughout the Summer, and will be found, from the point of view of health, one of the most profitable investments the household can make.