THE CULTIVATION OF CELERY.
Celery is an important and useful anti-scorbutic vegetable, which can be prepared for table in many ways, or simply used in soup. It is also by some held to be a good specific against rheumatism. Within the last seven years, celery-growing has become quite a business in North Notts and South Yorkshire. Within a radius of ten miles of Bawtry, in the latter county, twenty-five acres of land sufficed for the crop in 1878; but during 1885, upwards of four hundred acres were devoted to the cultivation of celery. Peat with a clayey or cool subsoil answers better for growing celery than stronger land. Most kinds of crops exhaust the land, but celery improves it.
The seed-beds are prepared in January and early in February, of leaves or manure, or any kind of heating material at hand. We learn from a communication by Mr C. M. Brewin, of Bawtry, that the earliest crops are ready for taking up the first week in September, and realise from two to three shillings per dozen roots retail price. The crop is worth from fifty-five to sixty pounds per acre, often more for very good crops; later crops from thirty-five to forty-five pounds per acre. The number of plants required per acre is sixteen thousand. Cost of labour in producing earliest crops on the ground: Average rent from thirty-five shillings to two pounds per acre; rates, taxes, and tithe, ten shillings per acre; manure, from nine to ten pounds per acre; labour, ten pounds per acre; carting to stations, four pounds per acre: leaving a profit for the best early crops of twenty-eight to thirty-two pounds. For late crops, labour is two pounds less, bringing a profit of ten to twenty pounds per acre. There are some failures, which are generally in the first year. The average quantity sent away weekly from various stations in the neighbourhood is two hundred tons.
Several labourers, very poor men, have started with small plots, and worked them in early morning before their ordinary day’s work began, and in the evenings, with the assistance of their wives and children. These men have now, some one horse and cart, and others two, and grow from two to five acres each.