153 
THE AMATEUR’S KITCHEN GARDEN.' 
ciate. Our collection of twenty sorts forms a row of about 
a hundred feet in length, on a border of deep, damp loam, the 
stools being four and a half feet apart, -and a trifle too close 
even at that, for the growth is tremendous. The border is 
well sheltered, and we secure usually a very early growth, so 
that really we do not need to force rhubarb. As soon as the 
leaves die down in the autumn we take cuttings of such as we 
require stock of. This is accomplished easily by cutting 
down by the side of the stools with the spade, and then care- 
fully slicing off pieces of the root with incipient crowns. If 
the variety operated on is one of the scarce and valuable 
kinds, we pot the pieces and put them in a cold pit and plant 
them out when growing freely in spring. If they are sorts 
easily obtained, and too cheap to justify the trouble of pot- 
ting, we plant them at once where they are to remain, for it 
is of very great importance to have rhubarb plants established 
as quickly as possible, and in all ordinary cases autumn 
planting is always to be preferred. Any amount of manure 
may be used in preparing the ground for rhubarb, and yet in 
a deep, damp, strong soil, it is scarcely necessary to use 
manure at all ; certainly, on our oak and wheat growing 
clay we can do wonders with rhubarb without help of 
manure. 
Forcing. — The simplest and, generally speaking, most 
useful mode of forcing is to proceed as follows : — When a 
frost has occurred in October (and not before), clean up the 
plantation, and put a barrowful of half-rotten stable or stye 
manure over every plant, taking care not to cover the crown 
more than three inches at the very utmost. On this point 
mistakes are often made, and the tender early stalks are 
unable to push through the hard cake of stuff above them at 
the time when they are most wanted and valued. The two 
•or three inches of manure should be spread around the stool 
to insure some benefit to the roots of the plant, for, as a 
matter of fact, the crown does not want it ; for the crown, 
indeed, we have next to provide. At the turn of the year, 
put on the crown of every plant that should give an early 
supply about a barrow-load of light dry litter. If you employ 
half-rotten manure, it may answer perfectly, but the com- 
paratively weak and very early growing varieties cannot 
always push through stuff that has dried in flinty flakes, and 
it will be found in practice that our plan of operations is 
