FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 283> 



PREPARING THE SOIL. 



In preparing the soil, if it is dry enough to get a horse on, we use large 

 iron shoes and prepare the land; we run ditches about twenty-four feet, 

 drain it, and then take a kind of shovel plow and make trenches, say four 

 feet apart ; in the bottom of these trenches we put in a fertilizer (the most 

 coming thing is the stable manure), and then there are about two inches 

 of the muck laid on top of this, and it is ready for planting. The seeds 

 are sown first for the early crop in hothouses, and are grown the same as 

 you would grow cabbage. They are thinned out, transplanted, and some- 

 times the tops are sheared off; the frost is out of the ground outside, and 

 they are taken out and set in these trenches from four to six inches apart, 

 (if you set them too close you can not get good healthy plants), and one 

 gang of men will go around setting the plants, and another comes along 

 watering them. There has to be a great deal of care taken just at this 

 time; they require a great deal of water. 



We grow thirty acres of land in the north part of Kalamazoo, and our 

 irrigation is perhaps something new. It consists of a large reservoir at 

 the top of a sloping field of thirty acres. This reservoir was filled with a 

 spring, and then had about five large windmills pumping water into that 

 all the time, and tile run down every sixteen feet in the field. When we 

 were plowing we would stop up the tile, and when the field got too wet we- 

 would let the field drain itself. Some of it requires lots of moisture, but 

 does not require that the roots should stand in water. 



CULTIVATING. 



After the field is planted and the proper care taken to see that the 

 roots start and the weeds are kept out by going through with a cultiva- 

 tor kind of shovel plows that we have especially adapted to the purpose, 

 and in about two weeks it is ready for the first looking after; that is, to 

 get the weeds away from the plant; and then it is gradually hilled up as 

 it grows until it is three to four inches above the roots. When the time 

 comes for bleaching, we have a hoe about that wide, forcing the soil right 

 up, and we go along the other side pulling it up the other way until finally 

 all you have there is a field of green leaves sticking out of piles of soiL 

 Two or three weeks of this hilling will bleach the celery if the weather is 

 right. If the nights are cold and the days warm, as it was this last fall, you 

 will have very hard work in bleaching it. One point, we do not bleach cel- 

 ery in warm weather; it is impossible until the last week of September or 

 the first of October. It is also bleached by taking a board and drawing it 

 up so that it will come on a little bit above the base of the leaves, about 

 six inches apart. You will have to watch that very carefully to see that 

 the sun does not scorch the celery, but fourteen days of that kind of 

 bleaching will bleach celery. But it is not this kind of bleaching that I 

 am speaking of. 



When we first grew celery we grew it on tlie uplands and got 60 cents 

 a dozen for it and never took it out of the ground before the frost came;, 

 but they kept wanting it earlier and earlier until now it is about as early 



