70 CULTURE OF SEAKALE 



planting time about five pounds of kainit per pole. 

 There is a good deal of salt in this mineral, and it has 

 the advantage over salt that it contains at least fourteen 

 per cent; of potash. I have in many cases used the latter, 

 as I am sure that the value of salt is over-estimated 

 for many things. By salt I mean, of course, chloride of 

 sodium. I have never yet found it as effectual as I was 

 taught it is, and I do not care to hand down commentless 

 an old tradition without proof of its efficacy. The 

 proved value of seaweed has been brought forward as 

 an instance of such, but one great use of this is its mulch- 

 ing quality, keeping the ground moist in very dry weather. 

 The manurial value is very little compared with its bulk. 

 Still I like it as a mulch, for it undoubtedly checks 

 evaporation. 



The finest seakale I ever saw was grown from such 

 cuttings as I have described, planted in a stiff loam rest- 

 ing on brick clay, but the land had been treated in the 

 following way. An old meadow was broken up and 

 half trenched by taking out a trench two feet deep and 

 two feet wide. The top soil was thrown in the first 

 trench, and on it was placed a large quantity of dung ; 

 the under soil was broken a foot deep and left in its 

 position, dung being put on the top of it followed by 

 the top soil. Thus, the land was left as follows when 

 finished top soil on the top, dung between this and the 

 broken subsoil. The land really was broken two feet 

 deep, with dung sandwiched one foot from top and 

 bottom. On this I grew in just a year from planting 

 stems larger than an ordinary cucumber. I had probably 

 one thousand plants, and I put over each crown in 

 February old meat tins, six-inch flower pots with clay 

 over the holes, in fact anything I could get, each cover- 

 ing being well screwed down into the soil to exclude 

 light. I had several dozens of six-inch drain pipes, and 

 for one-year-old crowns I would wish for nothing better. 



