267. For the natural ground crop, or drilled cucumbers, the beginning of June is the proper sowing time. plan usually followed is this ; the ground being made fine and level, shallow circular hollows are formed with the hand, a foot wide, and half an inch deep in the middle. The distance between each hollow is about three feet and a half; the distance between the rows of hollows, between five and six feet. Eight or ten seeds are sown in each cavi ty, to be afterwards thinned out to three or four. They are watered two or three times a week, according to the state of the weather, preferring the morning or the even ing for this operation. Pickling cucumbers are gathered chiefly from the middle to the end of August ; and they are best when not more than three inches in length. Cu cumbers form a very extensive and profitable article to the London market gardeners. In March they fetch above a guinea a dozen ; in August and September they are sold at a penny a dozen. One village (Sandy in Bedfordshire) has been known to furnish 10,000 bushels of drilled cucum bers in one week.
268. Some persons are careless about the seed which they use, or at least are ready to sow any kind that is re commended to them. This is wrong : when one is pos sessed of an approved kind, the safest way is to preserve seed of it. With this view, one good fruit is allowed to remain till it become yellow ; it is then placed, upright, in the full sun for some weeks, to acquire the most perfect maturation. The individual fruit having most prickles is commonly selected for this purpose. The seeds are after wards thoroughly washed from the pulp, dried, and tied in paper bags, to remain for a year at least.
269. Curious cultivators sometimes amuse themselves by planting cuttings of late cucumber plants in the begin ning of October : these, if placed in a hot-house or a well regulated hot-bed frame, grow freely, and produce fruit about mid-winter. But in order to have cucumbers at this season, a better plan is, to make them succeed melons in a filled pit, these being generally ripened off by the middle or end of October. The seedling cucumbers may be pre viously reared in small pots beside the melons, so as to be ready to take their places. They are watered once in four or five days, and commonly over the foliage, especially as winter advances, the fire-heat is made stronger.
All the pruning necessary at this season is, to stop the shoots as they spew fruit, at a joint or two beyond the fruit. A few cucumbers arc thus procured at the end of Decem ber, or the begining of January.
Gourds.
370. Allied to the melon and cucumber are the differ ent kinds of gourds, two or three of which are sometimes cultivated, and may here be mentioned.
The Pumpkin, Pumpion, or more cbrrectly Pompion, is the fruit of the Cucurbita Pepo of Linnaeus. The pump kin was the melon or millon of our early horticulturists, the true melon being formerly distinguished by the name of Musk-melon. The pumpkin is now cultivated princi pally for ornament or curiosity ; but in some of the vil lages of England, the country people plant it on dunghills, at the back of their houses, and train the shoots to a great length over grass. When the fruit is ripe, they cut a hole on one side, and having taken out the seeds, fill the void space with sliced apples, adding a little sugar and spice, and then bake the whole.
The Water-melon, or Citrul, (the fruit of the Cucurbita citrullus, L.) although it forms both the food and the drink of the inhabitants of Egypt for several months in the year, is little regarded in Britain. It requires the same atten tion and expence as the common melon ; the hot-beds and glass frames, indeed, would need to be even of a larger size. In a few places only, two or three plants of the water melon are occasionally cultivated with such attention as to procure the ripe fruit.
The Squash and the Warted gourd, the fruits of the Cu curbita melopepo and C. verrucosa, though commonly cultivated as esculents in North America, are considered in this country only as curiosities. In the same way are viewed the Bottle-gourd or false Calabash, C. lagenaria ; and the Orange gourd, C. aurantia, lately introduced, which last is really ornamental, when trained spirally round a pole, or against a wall, and loaded with its yel low fruit.
The Succada, or Vegetable Marrow, is a kind of small green gourd lately introduced. It is raised under a hand glass, and afterwards transplanted into a good aspect, and trained to a trellis. When the fruit is of the size of a hen's egg, it is dressed in salt and water, squeezed, and served up in slices on a toast.