168 
CULTUltE OF SEA-CALE. 
The plants will not be sufficiently strong the second year o( their 
growth after planting, to be worth forcing with hot manure; but they 
will be worth the trouble of covering with the soil from the paths. 
Besides, they must be cut off to increase the number of their suck- 
ers. About the third week in February, when the weather is dry, 
mark out the paths two feet three inches wide, and when the soil is 
finely broken, lay it upon the beds eight or nine inches thick, so 
that the beds and the paths, when covered, will appear like c in 
Fig. 16. As spring advances, examine the plants by removing the 
soil with your hands, and when they are grown seven or eight inches 
hieh, cut them off a little below the bottom leaf: their heads will be 
found perfectly white, and all the leaves growing close together. 
As you gather the head, throw a little soil over their roots. Al¬ 
though the buds have grown in soil, very little will be attached to 
them ; and this little is easily removed by plunging them into water, 
holding them by the upper end of the stem. 
16 
If the weather is settled about the end of April, the beds are to be 
entirely uncovered; this operation will appear to many to be most 
extraordinary : but it is essentially necessary, otherwise the few small 
Leads that may be left uncut will go to seed, and injure the plant for 
the following seasons. The gardener must take a sharp bright spade, 
and commence at the end of each bed, and throw the soil down into 
the paths; cutting off every head or parts that may he higher than 
the original level of the beds, in Fig. 16, a, b, before the soil was 
first placed upon them. The vital principle in the roots of the sea- 
cale is so great, that they cannot he injured by being cut through ; 
as will be seen by the number of suckers or offsets that will arise from 
their roots. During this second summer, the beds must be kept free 
from weeds, the paths dug as before, and the plants carefully exa¬ 
mined, retaining only four or five of the largest suckers at regular 
distances round their stems. Tf the heads of these plants had been 
left uncut, every one ol them would have gone to seed during the 
