94 GARDENING FOR PROFIT. 



one of the best hits I ever made in gardening. But by 

 this time my neighbors began to take an unusual interest 

 in my Celery crop, and I could monopolize the variety 

 no longer. The originator of our New White Plume 

 Celery, which will be described elsewhere, made an 

 equally good hit before his neighbors waked up to the 

 importance of its merits. 



A frequent source of complaint is the fact of seeds 

 failing to germinate during long continued dry weather, 

 and it is very important that the gardener should always 

 apply common-sense to his work, and not simply follow 

 routine, for what will suit for one condition of soil or 

 atmosphere would be unnecessary, or even wrong, for 

 another. I will give a case to illustrate. About the 

 fifth of May of 1871, I sowed a large patch of open 

 ground with Celery seed, and another with Cabbage 

 seed. The soil was in fine order, and the beds, after 

 sowing, were raked the Celery with a fine steel rake, 

 the Cabbage with a large wooden rake, which covered 

 the seed of each to the regular depth. The weather was 

 dry, with indications of its continuing so, and after sow- 

 ing I had both the Cabbage and Celery beds rolled 

 heavily, leaving, however, a strip of each unrolled, so 

 that I could clearly show to some of my young men what 

 the result of this omission would be if dry weather con- 

 tinued. Had a heavy rain fallen within a day or two 

 after sowing, it would have compacted the soil and pro- 

 duced the effect of rolling it. But we had no rain for 

 three or four weeks, and a burning-hot atmosphere, pass- 

 ing through the shallow, loose covering of the seeds, 

 shriveled and dried them up so that it was impossible 

 they could ever germinate. This little experiment re- 

 sulted exactly as any one having experience in seed-sow- 

 ing knew it must ; our crop of Celery and Cabbage 

 plants were as fine as need be on the rolled bed, while 

 not one seed in a thousand of the Celery, and not one in 



