CELERY. 123 



nearly as miicli as the growing. Enough plants may be 

 sold, in planting season, to pay for seed and summer 

 cultivation — that is, in some gardens. These things 

 taken into consideration, the cost is probably two hun- 

 dred dollars per acre. The cost of the crop varies, 

 rarely being the same two successive years. Manure is 

 comparatively cheap, but labor is dear. 



Celery has been grown and marketed for one dollar 

 and fifty cents per thousand plants, but the explanation 

 must be added that only in rare instances of exceeding 

 good fortune has this been done — where, from the seed 

 to the selling, everything was remarkably cheap, labor 

 at twenty-five to forty cents per day, by German women, 

 who had become, by long practice, expert at the work. 

 The safer figure to give is from fifteen to twenty dollars 

 per thousand, especially for amateur efforts, and, while 

 writing, distant growers are offering celery ready for 

 shipment at the station for sixteen dollars per thousand. 

 The reader can estimate for himself how small the mar- 

 gin of profit may be. For the rare instance : It is 

 claimed, by one man, that he prepared, in one day, 

 three muck beds, and sowed three dollars' worth of seed ; 

 it gave one hundred thousand plants, from which sev- 

 enty-five thousand were selected. With a boy to drop 

 the plants in the row, and a woman to set them out, 

 fifteen such couples, with one man to dig plants from 

 the bed, will set out seventy-five thousand in muck in 

 one day. This, it is claimed, has been done repeatedly. 

 Banking is done at the same rate ; so that after the sec- 

 ond banking the celery has cost less than seventy cents 

 per thousand. A grow'er, who had sold seventy-five 

 thousand, stated he did not think the crop had cost him 

 one hundred dollars on his muck ground. 



On sandy loam the cost is much greater, and the 

 yield less bulky. Heavy manuring, frequent cultivation 

 and much less rapid handling of plants in such ground, 



