56 GARDENING FOB YOUNG AND OLD. 



well with an ordinary plow ; except that it is necessary 

 to go twice in a row, up and down, instead of once. You 

 will see that this is simply making what are called dead 

 furrows, every four feet. 



When the work is done, draw out some of the richest, 

 most thoroughly rotted manure you can find and spread 

 in the rows, or dead-furrows. Spread it evenly and knock 

 it to pieces thoroughly with a hoe or potato hook, mixing 

 more or less soil with it, getting it, at any rate, well 

 broken to pieces. Then with a plow throw the soil back 

 again into the furrow; then roll and hirrow and roll 

 again, until you have made the soil as fine as possible. 

 Then take your four-foot marker again, set the line exactly 

 where it was in the first place, and run the marker along 

 the line just over where the manure has been put. If 

 the work has been well done, you will have five or six 

 inches of good mellow soil in which to set out your cel- 

 ery plants. I set my plants a foot apart in the row ; as 

 the rows are four feet apart we get ten thousand eight 

 hundred and ninety plants to the acre. 



Of course plants can be grown much closer than this. 

 The rows can be made three feet apart and the plants set 

 six inches apart in the row. This would give twenty- 

 nine thousand and forty plants to the acre, and if the land 

 is rich enough, moist enough and clean enough, and you 

 have the best plants, and give them the best of treatment, 

 and the season is every way favorable, you can get just as 

 good celery from the thicker planting as from the thin. 

 But my land is simply ordinary farm land and an acre or 

 two more or less, provided it will save labor, and insure a 

 crop in an unfavorable as well as a favorable season, does 

 not count. Certainly I would advise any farm boy, whose 

 father will furnish the land rent free, for a given num- 

 ber of celery plants, not to make the rows too near, or 

 set out the plants too close in the rows. 



Some of the old market gardeners may criticise me for 



