"When can I plant my beans?" asked Mab.

"Well, pretty soon now. Make your part of the garden, where you are going
to plant your beans, as smooth as you can. Then mark it off into rows. You
should plant your beans in rows with the rows about two feet apart, and
put the beans in each row so they are about four inches, one from the
other. That will give the plants room enough to spread."

"How do I plant my corn?" asked Hal.

"Well, corn must be planted a little differently from beans," answered
Daddy Blake. "You should have your rows from two to three feet apart and
each hill of corn should be from a foot to a foot and a half from the next
hill."

"Does corn only grow on a hill?" asked Hal.

"Oh, no," laughed his father, "though on some farms and gardens the corn
may be planted on the side of a hill. What I mean was that after your corn
begins to grow, the ground is hoed around the corn stalks in a sort of
little hill. That is done to keep it from blowing over, for corn grows
very tall, in the West sometimes ten and twelve feet high.

"However that is yellow or field corn, from which corn meal is made. The
kind you are going to plant, Hal, is called sweet corn, such as we eat
green from the cob after it is boiled. That may not grow so high. But in a
day or so it will be time for your corn and beans to be planted, for
Spring is now fully here and the weather is warm enough."

Hal and Mab worked hard in their gardens. They raked the ground until it