Fundamentals of Agriculture and Sericulture, Volume 3

...grow well. If hoed, it yields abundant fruit; if not hoed, there will be no harvest. This rule applies to all types of the five grains, vegetables, and fleshy vine-fruits luoA botanical category in ancient China distinguishing fruits grown on vines/the ground from those grown on trees..

○ Method for Managing Melon Flies One should rise before the dew has vanished, lift the melon vines with a staff, and scatter wood ash around the base of the roots. After one or two days, heap soil over the roots, and there will never be insects again.

○ Generally, the reason melons rot early is because they are stepped on or the vines are carelessly flipped over during the harvest. If they are carefully protected according to these principles, the fruits will remain viable until the frost falls and the leaves dry up. Simply follow this method and there is no need for alternative planting techniques.

○ Method for Pit-Planting Melons QuzhongAn intensive farming system where crops are grown in concentrated, well-fertilized pits rather than long furrows, maximizing yield in limited space. This applies to the early, middle, and late seasonal crops of melons.

After the rains in the sixth month late summer, plant vegetable beans. In the middle of the eighth month, use a plow to turn them under yanshaA green manure technique where legumes are plowed back into the earth to enrich the soil with nitrogen.. In the tenth month, turn the soil once more. Then, in the middle of the tenth month, plant the melons, spacing the pits at intervals of approximately two paces. Each pit should be as large as the mouth of a basin and five inches deep. Heap the soil around its edges like...