60 CELERY. 



CELERY. 

 CELERI. Apium graveolens. 



VARIETIES. 



White Solid. j New White Lion's Paw. 



Red-coloured Solid. North's Red Giant. 



Celeriac, or Turnip-rooted. 



THIS vegetable, so much esteemed as a salad, is known in 

 its wild state by the name of Smallage ; and is found in greai 

 abundance by the sides of ditches, and near the seacoast of 

 Britain. The effects of cultivation are here strikingly exhi- 

 bited, in producing from a rank, coarse weed, the mild and 

 sweet stalks of the Celery. This circumstance should stimu- 

 late the young gardener to aim at improvement in the culti 

 vation of plants in general. 



It is customary with some gardeners to raise their early 

 plants in hot-beds ; but as plants thus raised are apt to pro 

 duce seed- stalks, it is much safer to cultivate them in cold- 

 beds, prepared as directed for the raising of early Cabbage 

 plants. The seed for a general crop may be sown the last 

 week in March, or early in April, in rich, mellow ground, 

 and in a situation where the plants can be protected from the 

 parching heat of a summer sun (a border against a north 

 aspect is the most suitable). Some sow the seed broad-cast, 

 but the plants will be much stouter if raised in drills. The 

 drills may be half an inch deep, and six inches apart, so that 

 a small hoe can be worked between the rows ; and if pro- 

 perly attended to, every ounce of seed so sown will produce 

 ten thousand strong plants or more. 



The early sown plants should be pricked out in a nursery 

 bed of cool rich earth, as soon as they are two or three inches 

 high, there to remain about a month, after which they will 

 be fit to transplant into the trenches. 



Choose for this purpose a piece of rich ground, in an open 

 exposure ; mark out the trenches by line, ten or twelve inches 

 wide, and allow the space of three feet between them, which 



