V. ENDIVR. 



couple of inches high, and let them then remain where 

 they are j and you will have abundance of self-sowed 

 plants every spring for renewing your bed. 



147. ENDIVE. This is a plant used for salads, and 

 is sometimes used, perhaps, in cookery. There is a curled 

 sort, and one that is plain, or smooth-leaved. The curled 

 is generally preferred to the other, but perhaps there is 

 very little difference in the quality. The lettuce, when to 

 be had, is decidedly preferred to the endive ; and there- 

 fore this latter is used for salad in autumn, and through 

 the winter as long as it can be had. If any one wish 

 to have endive in summer, it must be sowed early -, but, 

 about the middle of the month of July, or, perhaps, a 

 little before, is the main time for sowing endive. If 

 sowed much before, it generally runs off to seed, and, in 

 fact, it is so much ground and trouble thrown away. 

 Make a bed very fine, and sow the seed in drills at 

 eighteen inches apart, and about half an inch deep in the 

 drill, the earth being pressed down very closely upon the 

 seed. The plants, which will be quickly up, must be 

 thinned as soon as possible to eighteen inches in the 

 row, and thus they will stand, throughout the bed, at 

 eighteen inches from each other. The leaf of the endive 

 goes off horizontally, and lies flat upon the ground j and, 

 if the ground be good and rich, as it ought to be, and 

 kept perfectly clean, the points of the leaves will meet 

 all over the ground, though at distances so great ; but, if 

 cramped for room, endive can never be fine. When the 

 plants have got something like their full size, they are to 

 be bleached before they be eaten j for, they have a bitter 

 and disagreeable taste, and are quite a coarse and die- 

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