BEST KINDS OF ONIONS AND HOW TO GROW THEM. 175 
they keep onions the year round they have a method of drying them. 
They take top and all and braid them together and hang them up 
above an oven, you might say, a dry kiln. When the onions are 
perfectly dry they can be kept any length of time. Mr. John Gage, 
of Waseca—I met him last year—told me that two years ago he 
raised several thousand bushels of onions and built extensive build- 
ings to store those onions in, and in the spring the larger part of 
them were grown. He sent a carload to St. Louis and I don’t re- 
member how many dollars he had to send after them to pay the 
freight. If he had gone to work and dried them out and sold them, 
instead of building his house, he might have made something. Al- 
most everybody has the same experience; it never pays to keep 
onions over in this country. It does not pay to hold them until 
spring, because onions from the south are shipped in here too early. 
CELERY. 
N. J. JOHNSON. 
(Southern Minnesota Horticultural Society.) 
I have been experimenting considerably in growing celery. In the first 
place I commenced growing celery about seven years ago on high land. I 
made big preparations, went to work and dug a well, set out a lot of celery, 
and it kept me busy most of the time carrying water; in fact, I spent more 
time carrying water than I got for the whole celery crop after it was mar- 
keted, to say nothing about the work of hoeing and cleaning for market, etc. 
I could not see any money in raising celery; in fact, I was money out of 
pocket. The first year I raised no celery. At the same time I was filling 
up the slough down on the bottom lands with manure, and I scraped about 
two or three inches of dirt on the top of that. This slough was nothing but 
mud and water. 
By the next spring this manure was pretty well decayed, and I thought 
I would again try a little celery; in fact, I did not plant that celery until the 
middle of August, and by the middle of October I had the finest celery 
that ever was grown. That gave me an entirely new idea. You understand 
that manure was fully decayed when I planted the celery, and at the same 
time the water was soaking into the manure from the bottom as the river 
happened to be high that summer, so the water soaked through the ground 
into the manure and into the roots of the celery. 
The next year I thought I would try a new experiment. I went to work 
and plowed a furrow—plowed twice in one furrow, that is, forward and back. 
I struck the furrows about three feet apart and filled them full of manure, 
and I had a pipe and hose attached to the spring, so as to let the water run 
in the furrow and fill it full. After it was thoroughly soaked, I covered the 
manure with about two inches of dirt and then packed it down with my feet 
in a straight row. I planted about six inches apart in the row and three feet 
the other way. After I had one row planted, I put on the water to let it 
soak thoroughly and then changed it from place to place, so as to keep the 
celery watered about two or three times a week. The plants will stand a long 
time before they commence to grow; in fact, they grow but little till the 
’ manure commences to decay. When the celery starts to grow, you can see 
it grow from day to day, but it don’t grow much from the time it is planted, 
about the middle of April, until .the middle of June, when it takes a start. 
