152 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN. 
The best of all the sorts for use in winter and spring is the 
Long Surrey, which is the handsomest and best flavoured. A 
more profitable, but a thoroughly coarse variety, is the 
Altringham, which has an objectionable green crown. In 
gross weight of crop this will always surpass the Long Surrey, 
and, though coarse and ugly, it is a good carrot. A most 
valuable variety for shallow soils is James s Intermediate, 
which has every good quality that can be desired except 
beauty, for it is short and club-like, but in colour and flavour 
excellent. The Belgian White carrot is one of the most 
valuable of agricultural roots, and especially for feeding horses. 
It is admissible to the table and makes a useful dish, and 
therefore may be recognized as a garden crop. 
The Parsnip ( Pastinaca sativa ) thrives in any soil, with 
or without manure, provided it is fairly prepared for by deep 
digging some time in advance of sowing the seed. It is, 
perhaps, the most profitable of all the roots grown in the 
kitchen garden, but it is less generally esteemed, and is there- 
fore less generally useful, than the potato. No one who cares 
to eat this sugary root need be deterred from growing it by 
untoward circumstances. We have grown a crop in a field of 
stones, in a sterile district, where we had to carry sand in to 
cover the seed, and the roots 1 at harvesting time were only 
a little thicker than a big man’s thumb, yet, when slowly 
cooked in a small quantity of w r ater, they were as marrowy 
and sweet as the finest of the Jersey parsnips ; indeed, we are 
inclined to believe they were a few degrees better. However, 
though small roots are not to be despised, large ones are most 
valued, and a rich, deep soil will produce them with just no 
more trouble than deep digging and sowing the seed, for they 
scarcely want weeding, and the thinning may be performed in 
almost no time. If, however, extra large roots are required, 
the way to secure them is to trench two spits deep, and put a 
good bed of fat manure in the bottom of the trench — the 
roots will find it in good time, and the result will be satis- 
factory. But manure dug in with surface-digging is more 
harm than good, for the roots, instead of going straight down, 
make all sorts of ugly forks and fibres, and a very large 
proportion of the whole bulk is wasted in preparing them for 
cooking. Therefore, if the labour of trenching and putting 
manure at the bottom of the trenches is too great, do not 
employ manure, and be content with smaller, but more usable 
