Vol. LVI. No. 2486. 
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 18, 1897. 
91.00. PER YEAR. 
H CELERY ON A VILLAGE LOT. 
A. NEW SYSTEM OF CULTURE. 
The Crop Advertising Itself. 
About one year ago, I described in The R. N.-Y. my 
method of growing celery. I have since made some 
improvements in the plan, and the results are still 
more satisfactory than they were last year. Fig 254 
shows a village lot of one-tenth of an acre ; this is a 
corner lot on the main street in the village in which 
I live, and near my residence. I have had some large 
offers for this ground for a building lot, and I am told 
that it is too valuable for gardening purposes ; but 
the profits from the celery, as I am growing it now, 
are more than the interest on the money that I could 
get for the lot. Last year, I grew on this lot over 
10 000 celery plants, from which I realized about $200, 
or at the rate of $2,000 per acre. On my farm, which 
lies back from the street along the brook, I have an- 
other field of 
about 40,000 
plants; but the 
plot in the village 
helps me to ad¬ 
vertise my celery 
business. There 
is a good deal of 
travel by it, and 
on the opposite 
corner is a fine 
hotel wh ere a good 
many traveling 
people are aceom- 
modated. The 
celery standing 
more than two 
feet high, and 
blanched ready 
for use in August, 
attracts consider¬ 
able attention,and 
there are so many 
people going by 
who want a few 
bunches, that I 
am able to retail a 
large part of it. 
In growingearly 
celery,I have ob¬ 
tained larger re¬ 
turns for the use 
of land and ex¬ 
penditure of labor 
than for any other 
crop, but there are 
some difficulties to 
be overcome, and 
I suppose that 
these have prevented greater competition, and make 
the crop more profitable. Many people who have 
tried to grow and blanch celery during the hot 
weather of July and August, have found that, under 
ordinary conditions, when plants were started in 
March in a hotbed, many of them would go to seed, 
that the celery blanches very slowly, and often be¬ 
comes stringy, tough, or has hollow stalks during 
hot and dry weather ; also that, if it is banked with 
earth, it will rust. I have overcome the most of these 
difficulties by the following plan : On my richest soil 
where I can use plenty of water for irrigation, I set 
the plants in double rows, 12 inches apart, with the 
plants six inches apart in the row. In the plot shown 
in Fig. 254, the spaces between the double rows are 
from 18 to 24 inches ; the latter distance gives the 
largest bunches. The most of the cultivation was 
done with a wheel hoe. 
When the celery was six or eight inches high, I 
began to run the water from a hose connected with 
my water tank in the narrow spaces between the 
rows, and tried to keep the wide spaces constantly 
stirred with the hand cultivator. When the plants 
were about one foot high, I set up the blanching 
boards on both sides of the double rows. These 
boards were from 12 to 18 inches wide, and were held 
in place by crosspieces notched to set down over the 
tops of the boards, although, in some places, I used 
only braces set against the boards, the boards leaning 
from the celery, so as to keep the leaves well exposed 
until it nearly reached its growth. This is very im¬ 
portant to keep the boards well apart at first, for if 
the leaves of the celery get wet inside of the boards, 
and are not exposed to the sun to dry them, they will 
rot and spoil the appearance of the celery, and also 
cause it to stop growing. When the boards are put 
up, it makes a dark space for the celery to grow in, 
and it soon commences to blanch. The water is kept 
running in the wide space between the boards, and 
the celery soon grows above them. The boards are 
then crowded close together, and the blanching is 
completed in a few days. If the irrigation be kept 
up, the celery will continue to grow until it is more 
than two feet high. 
The larger field of celery is grown by the same plan, 
except that the space between the double rows is 2 % 
feet; in this, I use a horse and narrow cultivator, and 
try to keep an earth mulch around the plants by fre¬ 
quent cultivation. In this field, irrigation is not begun 
until the blanching boards are set up, and the water 
is used to hasten the blanching or finishing off of the 
celery. The water starts a rapid growth, makes it 
tender, and prevents hollow stalks. 
The method I have described is adapted only to 
growing the self-blanching varieties for summer and 
fall use, and the best results are obtained with the 
White Plume celery. The first sowing is in a hotbed 
or cold frame April 1 (earlier than this it is liable to 
go to seed in this section), and later in the open 
ground. The plants are thinned out in the hotbed, 
and early in May, are transplanted directly to the 
field. The plants grown in the open ground are ready 
to transplant in June. The advantages of this method 
are that one-half of the blanching boards are saved, 
and the celery needs no washing, as no earth comes 
in contact with it, and the plants have sufficient room 
to grow to a marketable size, which they would not 
do, in my experiments, with the “new celery culture,” 
f. e., setting the plants from 6 to 12 inches apart each 
wa y- w. H. JENKINS. 
Delaware County, N. Y. 
CELERY GOING TO SEED. 
Mr. Jenkins, who wrote the above article, asks the 
following question : l * Last year, in a field of two 
acres of celery, less than one dozen plants went to 
seed. This year, 
on the same field, 
nearly one-fourth 
of the plants, on 
some parts of it, 
have gone to seed. 
Both years, the 
seed was sown in 
a hotbed at nearly 
the same time in 
March, and trans¬ 
planted in May, to 
open ground. 
What has made 
the difference in 
the celery in these 
two years? What 
are the conditions 
of soil, culture, 
weather, etc., that 
cause celery to go 
to seed when sown 
early in some sec¬ 
tions, and not in 
others ? Is it pos¬ 
sible, in my sec¬ 
tion, to grow 
celery ready for 
market in July 
and August, with¬ 
out any of it going 
to seed ?” 
A. Donald Gives 
His Experience. 
We are not told 
that the seed used 
this season was 
from the same 
package as last year; if this be so, then I have no 
reason to give for the change. I have always claimed 
that it was in the seed that had been gathered from 
plants left standing in the ground all winter, not 
being taken up and reset in the spring, as such seed 
is more likely to grow seed stalks than that which 
has been kept from the freezing point during the cold 
of winter. This season, all through this section, we 
have had more seed stalks than usual. Some of our 
best and largest growers claim that it is caused by 
plants being frozen after being planted out in the 
field ; that may be so, but I can’t believe it yet, as I 
have had more this season than for many years, and 
none of it was frost-bitten after it was set outdoors, 
and the seed was planted in February. But last year, 
plants from seed planted in February, and the plants 
set in the field and out in the seedbed in April, were 
frozen hard several times, so much that they seemed 
to be all dead for a time, but afterward, came on and 
