54 GARDENING FOR YOUNG AND OLD. 



For the main crop, the seed should be sown in a warm 

 sheltered spot as early in the spring as the soil is in 

 good working condition. The better plan is to prepare 

 the ground the previous autumn, and the more manure 

 you can work into it, the better. Do this as early in the 

 fall as the land can be spared ; this will give the weed 

 seeds in the manure and in the soil a chance to germi- 

 nate. Work the ground several times, for the more you 

 work it, the more weed seeds will germinate and be de- 

 stroyed ; this is very important, because celery seed is 

 slow to germinate in the cold soil in the spring, and if 

 the land is full of weed seeds, they will start long before 

 the seeds of the celery and cause a great deal of trouble 

 in hoeing and weeding. It is folly to endeavor to raise 

 celery plants unless the land is very rich, and is kept 

 scrupulously clean. If the land has been carefully pre- 

 pared in the autumn, I would not plow or spade it in the 

 spring, as that would bring up the cold soil to the surface. 

 As soon as the frost is out of the first three or four inches 

 of the surface soil, hoe the bed and rake it with a steel 

 rake, and make it fine and smooth. Then mark rows ten 

 inches apart, and sow the celery seed evenly in the rows, 

 depositing ten or twelve seeds to each inch of row, with a 

 radish seed every three or four inches apart in the row. 

 The radish seed will germinate quickly, and show you 

 where the rows are, and enable you to hoe lightly be- 

 tween them, long before the celery makes its appear- 

 ance. The great point is, to get strong, stocky plants 

 with an abundance of fine roots. For this purpose it 

 will be necessary, not only to keep the bed very clean, 

 but to thin out the plants where too thick. The plants 

 ought to be not less than an inch to two inches apart in 

 the row. When ready to transplant, the bed should be 

 saturated with water, and the right way to do this, is to 

 take a fork or spade and thrust it down deep into the soil 

 between the rows and below the roots of the celery, and 



