SEAKALE. 211 



To blanch the seakale, without which it is not 

 fit to be eaten, procure pots, made for the purpose, 

 with moveable lids, and place them over the plants 

 in the end of the second autumn; then heap up 

 stable litter till the pots are covered a few inches 

 overhead. The moveable lids are very convenient 

 for observing whether the plants are ready for cut- 

 ting, without turning and cooling their warm bed: 

 and few sights are more interesting than the open- 

 ing of their dark abode in the dead of winter, and 

 the extracting of the ponderous curled shoots in 

 full vigour of growth, white as snow, and glossy 

 and fragile as spun glass. Blanching may be 

 attained with less trouble if forcing be not re- 

 quired. You may have excellent seakale in April 

 from drills ridged up with earth; in which case, 

 every pair of drills must have greater distance for 

 the convenience of mounding, and the plants may 

 be so much closer in the bed. Straw, in contact 

 with the plants, is unsuitable to blanching, as it 

 communicates a bad flavour; but raked leaves do 

 well, perhaps fern, sand certainly; coal ashes are 

 recommended, but the idea is abominable. Where 

 the plant grows wild, as it does by the seashore in 

 several parts of England, it is gathered in the finest 

 condition, being whitened by the sand which the 

 waves throw out, and which the winds pile gently 

 over its head in the manner of a snow wreath. As 

 the earthenware of the flowerpot kind is expensive 

 and liable to be broken, the author has long used 

 coarse wooden boxes, or bars of paling along each 



