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LXL UPON THE CULTURE OF CELERY. 



[Read before the HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, December 5th, 1826.] 



THAT which can be very easily done, without the exertion of much 

 skill or ingenuity, is very rarely found to be well done, the excitement 

 to excellence being in such cases necessarily very feeble. The practice of 

 a very large number of British gardeners, in the management and culture 

 of exotic plants and fruits, and in every difficult department of their 

 professions, probably approximates to, if it have not in many instances 

 attained, perfection ; whilst the culture of many of the common esculent 

 plants is still capable of much improvement. I shall at present confine 

 my observations to one of these, the Apium graveolens, or celery. This 

 plant, under the name of smallage, a worthless and almost poisonous 

 weed, is found in its wild state growing most luxuriantly in rank soils by 

 the sides of wet ditches, where it can obtain at the same time abundant 

 food and moisture. Without being very well supplied with food, it will 

 not thrive at all in our gardens, and therefore it rarely fails to obtain a 

 proper quantity of manure ; but as with this it is in most seasons found 

 to grow moderately well, the gardener has not paid due attention to the 

 circumstance of its being naturally almost an aquatic plant. I have 

 during several seasons supplied my celery plants much more copiously 

 with water than is usually done, and always with the best effects ; but in 

 the last excessively dry season, I gave water so profusely that the ground 

 was constantly kept wet ; and before the plants were moulded up above 

 the common level of the ground, that to some extent round their roots 

 was so perfectly saturated with moisture as to wholly preclude the proba- 

 bility of the plants suffering by want of it during the remaining part 

 of the summer. My gardener had not raised his plants at the usual 

 and proper season in the last spring, the seeds not having been sown till 

 nearly the end of April ; but nevertheless the plants had acquired in the 

 middle of September nearly the height of five feet. Not the quantity 

 only, but the quality also of the produce, was greatly improved by the 

 abundant supply of water ; for it became, as might have been inferred, 

 more crisp and tender. The rows were five feet distant from each other ; 

 but those spaces were not sufficiently wide to permit the plants to be 

 moulded up to the proper height ; and this circumstance, joined to the 

 preternatural tenderness of the leaf-stalks, caused those to be broken 

 and beaten down so much by the first windy weather, that my crop, 

 though very excellent, was not nearly as perfect as it might have been. 



