April 6, 1895. 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
507 
and, when the seedlings are fit, planted out in rich 
soil in drills which have been drawn six inches deep, as 
by this means earthing-up as growth proceeds will 
be much facilitated. Blanching, of course, is neces¬ 
sary, and the greater the length and thickness of the 
plants the more valuable the crop will be. If 
specimens fit for an exhibition table are required a 
sowing should be made under glass in February and 
the young plants potted up and grown on until the 
middle of April, when they should be hardened off 
and planted out into trenches. It will be necessary 
to have these two feet in depth and the same in 
width, and partly filled up with well rotted manure. 
Night soil which has been deodorised with charcoal 
or wood ashes and mixed with ordinary soil will be 
found to be an excellent manure. Fill up the trench 
within six inches of the top, and earthing up as 
required, about once in three weeks'usually, plenty of 
water being also necessary. Leeks may thus be 
grown to three pounds weight each, and with stems 
from twelve to fifteen inches in length. The best 
varieties are The Lyon, Oxonian and Sutton’s 
Exhibition ; Dobbie’s Champion is also one of the best. 
The Tomato. 
This now brings me to the Tomato and this is a crop 
that well pays for strict attention. Seed should be 
sown in February in pans, and care should be taken 
to sow thinly, for, as a rule, every seed grows. A 
temperature of 55 0 to 6o° Fahr., will soon cause the 
seed to germinate, the plants being potted off into 
3-in. pots as soon as the rough leaves are made. 
When the roots are travelling freely, and before the 
plants have become root-bound, they should be 
transferred to 5-in. pots, using a compost of loam and 
wood ashes with a little leaf mould and soot. The 
next shift will be their final one if it is intended to 
grow them in pots, and this time a g in. pot is large 
enough ; in fact, I do not think anything is gained by 
using pots of a larger size. In potting ram these 
as hard as possible, providing the compost—which 
should consist of two parts of turfy loam, one part 
horse-droppings, and one part wood ashes with a 
sprinkling of soot—is not two wet. The drainage 
should be carefully looked after, covering the crocks 
with the rougher parts of the turf. By firm potting 
you obtain a much more fruitful plant, also a short 
joint stocky growth, with firm, leathery foliage. 
The growth of the Tomato should be confined to 
one stem, but it will sometimes be found that after a 
period of dull, sunless weather, that the flowers have 
failed to set satisfaciorily. In this case the side 
growths should be allowed to grow, stopping them at 
the first truss of bloom, a crop being often thus 
obtained when failure would have ensued under 
different treatment. As soon as the lower trusses 
are set, feeding should commence, and in these small 
pots it is hardly possible to overdo it, providing, of 
course, that the liquid manure is not too strong. A 
mixture of soot and diluted o»w manure yield the 
best results of any we have tried. It will be found a 
considerable aid to pollination if the trusses of bloom 
are gently tapped about the middle of each day. 
There are many methods of growing Tomatos, and 
I should have liked to have treated on planting out 
and outside culture had time and space in this paper 
permitted. A close, stagnant atmosphere should 
always be avoided in the Tomato house, free ventila¬ 
tion being very necessary, leaving a little air on at 
night also. As regards varieties I have always 
found Sutton’s Perfection what its name implied, 
although many others are good, of which Ham 
Green and Conference may be mentioned. We 
experience little or no trouble with the Tomato 
disease, and I attribute this to the firm potting and 
the consequent sturdiness of the foliage which the 
spores of the fungus seem unable to penetrate. 
Celery is a vegetable that is always in demand. 
The seed should be sown thinly in well-drained pans 
and placed in a warm greenhouse. As soon as the 
rough leaf appears, the seedlings must be pricked 
into soil of a somewhat rougher nature than that in 
which the seed was sown and transferred to a cold 
frame. Much care is necessary that the plants do 
not receive a check, or " bottling ” may subsequently 
become troublesome. The usual course pursued in 
the cultivation of Celery is to plant in specially 
prepared trenches, and this is the best plan where 
the soil is not of an extremely wet and heavy 
character, in which case planting on the level ground 
is advisable, as the plants will keep much better 
through the winter months if grown thus. Where 
space is no consideration trenches to hold single 
rows are preferable, but to have two rows in each 
trench will be a saving of space, entail less work, and 
will also give good results. 
In preparing the trenches well-rotted farmyard 
manure may be dug into the bottom, adding three 
inches of soil on the top. Planting should be care¬ 
fully performed with a trowel and the plants well 
watered afterwards. Plenty of water should be 
given in dry weather through the summer, and liquid 
manure will also be of service, although this must 
not be overdone. Earthing-up should be looked 
after at proper intervals and finally completed on 
the approach of frost. After a spell of the severe 
weather much of the crop is often ruined through 
its rotting off, but this, I believe, is as much due to 
the change immediately after the frost as to the frost 
itself. I would here advise the use of rough boards 
fastened together in the shape of the letter V and 
placed upside down on the top of the ridges to ward 
off the rain. In any case on the approach of frost a 
quantity of Celery should be lifted and stored in 
leaves in a shed or outhouse from whence they may 
be taken as required for use. The Celery-fly is 
usually in evidence during some part of the growing 
season. The sowing of soot frequently on the plants 
will, however, be found a good method of destroying 
the maggot resulting from the fly. 
A good old variety of red Celery is Major Clarke's 
Solid Red, and one will hold its own with the best of 
them; yet Standard Bearer is also an excellent red 
variety, whilst Sutton’s Solid White and Wright's 
Giant White are amongst the best sorts in the white 
section. 
Asparagus. 
To grow Asparagus from seed requires three years 
before a good return can be had, and in doing this 
the planting of rows 3 ft. apart on the level 
ground is the best plan to adopt, the plants being 
thinned to the same distance apart from each other 
in the rows. A light soil well trenched with plenty 
of manure is required, and frequent applications of 
wood ashes, salt, soot, and liquid manure are 
necessary to obtain large succulent growths ; in fact, 
as much salt should be sown as will keep the ground 
free from weeds, such an application working wonders 
on the crop. 
Turnips. 
These also claim the attention of the gardener as 
valuable and highly-prized vegetables. These cannot 
be grown too quickly; they will be tough, high 
flavoured, and stringy. In light soil a difficulty is 
often experienced in getting a crop of juicy roots. 
An excellent plan of prolonging the season is to lift 
a quantity of the roots as soon as full size is reached 
and bury them in some cool, moist situation. In 
this way much of the difficulty may be overcome by 
their retaining their tenderness till wanted. The 
Swede Turnip is a useful variety to sow for winter 
crop, and it makes an excellent change of vegetable 
for the table. 
(To be continued). 
A GARDENER’S EDUCATION.* 
The pertinency and vital importance of the subject 
I have selected as the key-note of our conversation 
to all those who have any love for, and take any 
pride in the profession of horticulture, will, I con¬ 
ceive, appeal most forcibly to all of you here present 
this evening. It is a subject of well-nigh unlimited 
range concerning which volumes, nay libraries, 
might be written without any great danger of its 
being exhausted. Bearing this fact in mind, I shall 
only touch upon what I consider to be a few of the 
most prominent ideas that suggest themselves with¬ 
out attempting to detail the side issues and facts of 
minor importance which cluster round them. While 
we may differ considerably from each other with 
regard to the relative and proportionate value of the 
sciences related to and collateral with horticulture, 
also as to the extent to which a good gardener should 
be able to claim acquaintance with these sciences, 
still, I think all of us will agree with the statement 
that a gardener to be successful in this age of 
keenest rivalry must of necessity be a singularly 
well-informed individual—a kind of walking 
encyclopedia in fact. When I say gardener, I do 
not mean the general factotum who hovers about an 
establishment where the proverbial boy and the 
wheelbarrow are kept—far from it! 
To start with, we should have a clear idea of what 
a gardener is, or should be, as well of the duties that 
* A Paper recently read before the Ealing Gardeners’ Mutual 
Improvement Society, by Mr. A. S. Galt. 
are likely to devolve upon him, before we can offer 
an opinion as to the' way in which he should be 
educated ; for, of course, it should follow that the 
best kind of education for a gardener is the 
particular kind that most thoroughly fits him for the 
work that lies before him. Naturally enough, we 
are now confronted with the question. What is 
his work ? We reply, gardening. Therefore in order 
to gain an accurate idea of the methods of train¬ 
ing necessary to make a man a thorough gardener in 
every sense of the word we must devote a few 
minutes to the careful consideration of the profession 
itself, its intricacies and its difficulties, as well as its 
joys and utilities. Dr. Lindley defines horticulture 
as "that branch of knowledge which has to do with 
the cultivation, multiplication, and amelioration of 
the members of the vegetable kingdom"—a defini¬ 
tion which is as complete as it could possibly be 
made, and one which we cannot do better than 
accept. It divides itself naturally into two great 
branches each dependent the one upon the other, yet 
each essentially distinct, viz., theory and practice. 
The question as to how much theory and how 
much practice should enter into the education of a 
gardener is a moot point, and for all I can see seems 
likely still to be. It is, if I may so term it, the 
" red herring ” of the horticultural educationalist 
and many and fierce have been the battles fought 
over this " herring." There are many very practical 
men who affect to despise and laugh to scorn the 
theorist, looking upon him as a curious sort of an 
individual whose experiments they consider more in 
the light of amusement than anything else. I am 
aware that this school of gardeners is fast dying out, 
and indeed I think it would not be a very great 
calamity if we had none of them left among 
us. I contend that every gardener should at 
least have a knowledge of the great fundamental 
laws and principles which underlie all his work, for 
it has been proved over and over again that it is by 
an intelligent understanding of the laws of the theory, 
that a careful and observant husbandman will find 
the best and surest methods of improving his 
principles of practice. I would emphatically state 
that a gardener should be able to give a fairly 
satisfactory reason (if asked for one), why he would 
conduct any given operation in a certain way, why 
he would treat one plant in one way, and another 
plant in a totally different manner. A certain pro¬ 
portion of theory must combine with the ordinary 
elements of practice or the horticulturist will 
be working in the dark, pushed along a groove 
in which he is kept by the enthralling bonds of 
prejudice, and unable to rise superior to them 
because of the absence of light. 
Now a word as to the personal qualities that a 
gardener has of necessity to cultivate. He must be 
pevscvering. The man who gives up at the first breath 
of an adverse wind will never achieve success, will 
never raise himself above the level of the common 
herd. He must be patient, for all things come to 
him who knows how to wait. He must be obsevvant, 
for great are the utilities of observation, and to be 
able to profit by failures as well as by successes is 
the key that unlocks the door of fate. He must be 
resourcejul, perhaps the most important qualification 
of all, and certainly the one most rarely met with. 
I have said that all these qualifications are essentials 
to success, and yet no human hand can bestow them 
upon those who lack them. They can only be self- 
acquired, and who will say that the self-educated, 
self-taught man is not as noble a being as any in 
which moves the breath of life, provided he makes a 
good job of himself. 
Let us briefly glance at the demands that our great 
mistress makes upon her servants at the present day 
in our own country. For those who intend going 
abroad a special course of training is, as a rule, 
necessary. Any remarks that I may make this 
evening therefore are intended to apply to gardening 
at home. Here, of course, in England the gardener 
has to be waging a perpetual war with nature (at 
least, that part of it that we call the weather), for 
from the very state of the climate vegetative life 
is held in abeyance for a considerable part of 
the year. I suppose no one will contradict me 
when I say that our climate is a peculiarly change¬ 
able and consequently trying one. Apropos of this 
I am reminded of a story of an American, who, on 
returning to his home after a visit to the tight little 
island, and being questioned as to the kind of 
weather he had experienced there, said they had had 
