94 GARDENING 



Sorrel Fried in Batter 



Make a small quantity of frying batter, and take the 

 middle leaves of the sorrel ; wash them in two or three waters, 

 drain them, and trim them. Dip them into the batter, and 

 fry in hot fat till crisp and brown. Serve hot, garnished with 

 fried parsley. 



SPINACH 



Spinach is very easy to cultivate ; it only 

 requires to sow the seed broadcast or in drills in 

 moderately rich good ground, loam or clay, and 

 when up thin it out to a few inches apart. If the 

 plants run to seed soon after it comes up, as it often 

 does, the reason is the ground is too light, poor, or 

 dry, and weather too hot, and in this case the 

 ground requires to be made deeper and richer. 

 There are four kinds of spinach, the smooth 

 seeded or summer spinach and the prickly seeded 

 or winter spinach. Mountain spinach and New 

 Zealand spinach. The first should be sown in 

 drills a foot apart and an inch deep every three or 

 four weeks from the middle of February till August, 

 and when well up to be thinned out to six inches 

 apart ; keep it moist at the root. 



The winter spinach should be sown in August 

 and up to the first week in September. The soil 

 should be firm and moderately rich, and the plants 

 thinned out to nine inches apart. 



Watering the plants with a solution of nitrate of 

 soda, the strength of an ounce to a gallon of water, 

 produces large leaves in abundance. Soot is good 

 to put to the roots also. 



New Zealand spinach is sown in heat in March 



