Salad Culture. 241 



grew; they will enable us to supply our own markets with an im- 

 portant commodity, for which a good deal of money now goes out 

 of the country ; and, not least, their judicious use will make fresh 

 and excellent salads possible in winter. At present the produce is 

 so inferior and so dirty at that season, that it is generally avoided, 

 and rightly so ; for lettuces when hard and wiry from alternations of 

 frost, sleet, and rains slug-eaten and half-covered with the splash- 

 ings of the ground, above which they hardly rise are not worth 

 eating or buying. And though they may be grown well in frames 

 and pits, the method herein described is better and simpler than 

 that, and the lettuces thus produced are finer than those grown in 

 English gardens in winter. 



The Barbe de Capucin is the most common of all salads in Paris 

 in the winter and early spring, and for its culture the cloche is not 

 required. It may be readily raised by every person having a 

 rough hotbed, or even a cellar, and is a good salad that nobody 

 need be without. It is perhaps too bitter for some tastes, bat is 

 often now used by English families, and is well worthy of culture 

 in small gardens, because so very easily forced when other salads 

 are scarce. The market gardeners in the neighbourhood of Paris 

 sow in the month of April every year quantities of the wild chicory 

 seeds on purpose to produce this salad. Before the early frosts they 

 dig them out with a fork, taking great care not to break the roots, 

 and put them in by the bells in a place where they will be ready to 

 hand in the middle of October. A hotbed is prepared in an obscure 

 place in a deep cellar or cave without air or light will be prefer- 

 able. In this genial hotbed they are forced : being first tied up in 

 bundles, slightly sprinkled with water, the tops cut off at the end 

 of a fortnight or three weeks, and the old roots thrown away, as 

 they will not bear a second cutting. They may be kept for plant- 

 ing out, but it is scarcely worth while to do so. Successions of this 

 are kept up every fortnight. 



This salad is of all others that which may be had with the least 

 amount of trouble by any person in possession of a spot of rough 

 ground, a cellar, or any dark place where a little heat might be 



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