Remarks 07i Raising Celery. 311 
I prick out the plants from the hot bed, three inches apart every 
way, watering them thoroughly every day, when the weather is 
not damp or rainy. 
Here they grow until about the 10th or 15th of June — the 
season for the final planting out. Having fixed up the ground for 
my celery patch, I have it well trenched two feet deep, with a 
spade, if it has not been trenched previously. In the trenching, 
I bury all the best top soil in the bottom of the lower spit, and 
throw the clayey or gravelly subsoil on the top. The reason for 
this procedure is obvious. You always set celery plants in a 
trench. If you take ofi half the top soil to make this trench, it 
is evident that you have but a very poor bottom left, on which to 
grow celery. On the other hand, if you make the soil of double 
the usual depth, and put the best soil at the bottom of the two 
feet, it is placed exactly where it is of most benefit to the roots of 
the plants; while the poorer subsoil, being on the top, answers 
equally well to raise about the stalks, in order to blanch them. 
Very well; at the 10th of June, then, I mark out my plat of 
trenched ground into trenches three feet from each other. The 
trenches themselves should be dug a foot wide, and eight inches 
deep. You can scarcely make the soil in them too rich; and I 
have ascertained by experiment, that the celery plant not only 
likes common stable manure, but is also very fond of bone dust, 
or horn shavings. 1 therefore, in preparing the trench, put half 
a -peck of either of these substances to the soil of every fifty feet 
of trench, and a quart of fine packing salt. Then the whole ma- 
nure, bone dust, etc., is well incorporated in the soil of the trench, 
to the depth of six or eight inches, and you are ready for the 
transplanting. 
It is best to do this in a dull or cloudy day. But if it is pro- 
perly done, that is, with halls of earth to each plant, one day will 
answer nearly as well as another. In order to accomplish this, 
the stock, or nursery bed, in which the plants grow in their se- 
cond stage, must be thoroughly saturated with water, two or three 
hours in advance. Then, with a trowel, take up each plant sepa- 
rately, with a small ball of earth, lay the balls in a sieve or bas- 
ket, and carry them at once and plant them in the trenches. If 
it is well done, as it may indeed be with the greatest facility, not 
one plant in five hundred will fail; and they will scarcely suffer 
the least check, and will require no shading. 
About earthing up the plants, in order to blanch or whiten the 
stalks, there is a good deal of difference of opinion; but it is all 
easily reconciled. If you wish very large plants, you must not 
commence blanching till the last three or four weeks. If you do 
not care about the size of the celery, but oidy the delicacy and 
crispness of flavor, you must commence earthing up about the 
