"Yes, come on to the garden."
Daddy Blake had asked Uncle Pennywait, that day, to smooth off a plowed
and harrowed place ready for the cabbage plants to be put in that evening,
and the long rows, dug in the brown soil, were now waiting.
"Where did you get the cabbage plants?" Mab wanted to know. "Did you grow
them in a little box down at your office, Daddy, as we did the tomatoes
here?"
"No, Mab, not quite that way, though I might have done that if I had had
room. I bought these cabbage plants in the market on my way home. Some
farmers, with lots of ground, plant the cabbage seed early in the spring
in what are called 'hot-frames.' That is they are like our tomato boxes
only larger, and they are kept out of doors. But over the top are glass
windows, so the cold air can not get in. But the warm sun shines through
the glass as it did through our tomato box, and soon the cabbage seeds
begin to sprout.
"Then the plants grow larger and larger, until they are strong enough to
be set out, as the tomatoes were. In this way you can grow the vegetables
better than if you waited until it was warm enough to put the seed right
out in the garden, and let the plants grow up there from the beginning.
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