1861. 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMEE. 



105 



plowed or gpaded, and the plants set in rows four 

 feet apart, aud six inches in the row. Work the 

 ground once a week with cultivator or shovel 

 plow until the plants are fifteen or eighteen inches 

 high. Ri collect, th's is none of your sickly 

 stuff, grown in the bottom of a two foot ditch. 

 At this stags of its growth, throw a light furrow 

 egainst the plants, and with the hand straighten 

 them up, so that the stems will stand close to- 

 gether. After a few days you can then turn a 

 heavy furrow against them; this will stand ten days 

 to extend the hearts, when the banking is finish- 

 ed with the spade. \7e think that you will say 

 that this is a cheap and ready way to grow giant 

 celery, in spite of the profession. 



TO WINTER OUT OF DOORS. 



Select a dry piece of ground where the water 

 will not sta-- d ; if in clay, it must have a 

 good natural drainage ; lay off the trench a foot 

 wide, and excavate to the depth of the celery. 

 Take the plants up and shake out the earth and 

 set the roots on the bottom of the trench, and 

 pack the plants as close as they will stand. Put 

 nothing between them, simply fill the trench as 

 solid as they wi-1 stand without bruising the 

 stems. The moisture of the bottom of the ditch 

 will be sufficient to keep the plants in good con- 

 dition. In putting them in have them stand per- 

 pendiculfir. Celery should not be taken up too 

 ear'y, as it wiil whiten too quickly and rot, not 

 a very desirable result About the loth of Oc- 

 tober at this point, and earlier further north, is 

 about the right time to begin, so as to close 

 about the 25th, if you have much of a stock ; if 

 not, you can look after it during this time if 

 you have leisure. Select dry weather to take it 

 up. In the nest place, throw on to the edges of 

 the trench about three or four inches of stable 

 manure, leaving a strip of the green leaves of 

 the celery sticking out to permit evaporation, 

 and to prevent a too rapid ripening. As soon as 

 there i- danger of frost — say the last of Novem- 

 ber or first of December — put on a final covering 

 of coarse manure, six to eight inches deep, and 

 wide enough to protect the sides of the trench 

 from frost. The object is to completely protect 

 the ground from freezing, yet not to heat the 

 plants. Of course, this will depend on the ex- 

 posure and quaUty of the material used. Farm- 

 ers can rse chaff for this purpose when they 

 have it. You can now take it up at any time it 

 is needed for winter use, and you will find it 

 completely blanched. The growth has been nat- 

 ural and vigorous, and the blanching being an 

 after operation, the plants will te found rich and 

 crisp. 



Grow your own plants and not call in ary pro- 

 fessional advice, if you wish to succeed. Of 

 course, you want rich and deeply cultivated land ; 

 if too flat, throw it up into beds, so that heavy 

 rains will not check the growth. 



Plas Gotten. 



The suljoet of discussion before (he Legisla- 

 tive Agricultural Society last eren'ng, was the 

 culture of flax ard its preperation for sj'inning. 

 A full report wi'l be found in another column. 



We have watched with much interest (]ie move- 

 ment for the introduction of the fl^^x fibre as a 

 substitute for cotton. There is reason to believe, 

 incredible as it may seem, that the substitute 

 has bfen found which, before another generation 

 passes away, will take the place of cotton in so 

 large a degree as not only to drive " King Cot- 

 ton" from his throne and reduce him to (he ranks, 

 but relieve the world from dependence on him 

 altogether — enable it in fact to have plenty of 

 shirts, if need be, without beitig hclplesi^ly de- 

 pendent npon him and his worshipers. 



Somewhat le*-~s than seventy years ago, the cul- 

 tivation of cotton in the Southern States was aa 

 experiment; forty years ago, the value of the 

 crop was over $20,000,000 ; at the present tim« 

 that must be multiplietl by ten. With all this 

 the Southern planter had little to do: left to 

 himself and his own genius and invention alone, 

 there would have been no quarrel on the tapis 

 to-day about negro slavery, because nobody 

 would have thought of cotton aa king, ^he vast 

 impetus given to its cultivation grew out of the 

 inventive genius of others. Whitney, a "Yan- 

 kee," taught the, planters how to clean it at a 

 comparatively nominal expense; while Arkrigtit 

 and others furnished the machinery by which 

 the cost of spinning and weaving was reduced so 

 low as to make the cloth incomparably the cheap- 

 est textile fabric the wotid has ever seen. 



Bat genius isnot dead nor invention exhausted. 

 They have done with cotton, however, and are 

 bestowing their attention elsewhere. For seve- 

 ral years they have been performing experiments 

 upon flax and hemp, with (he hope of obtain- 

 ing from one or both a substitute for Cv- loa that 

 would be cheaper than cotton itself, with the 

 manifest advnntage to the world that its produo- 

 tion would hardly be bounded by c iraate. 



Several machines have already been produced 

 which perform the work, but until recently no 

 one that could do it cheap enough. T.'iat point 

 has now been reached, it is said, but whether it 

 has or not, the principle has been dis^covered, and 

 Yankee ingenuity will not let it alone til: the ma- 

 chine is made which will take the flax as brought 

 from the field, without any other preparation 

 than drying, and turn out the fibre ready for 

 spinning at a price not exceeding ten cents a 

 pound. No invention could be more opportune, 

 or so important to the free States. In less than 

 thirty years from the first introduction of cotton 

 seed into this country, the value of the crop ex- 

 ceeded thirty million dollars. So, in less than 

 that time, with the aid of this new invention, 

 will the flax crop of New England alone be worth 



