Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) / A Practical Guide to the Making of Home Grounds and the Growing of Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables for Home Use

by L. H. Bailey

Celeriac.—A form of the celery plant in which the tuberous root is the edible part (Fig. 302). The tuber has the celery flavor in a pronounced degree, and is used for flavoring soups and for celery salad. It may be served raw, sliced in vinegar and oil, or boiled.

The culture is the same as given for celery, except that no earthing or blanching is required. About an equal number of plants are obtained from the same weight of seed as from celery seed. Celeriac is extensively used abroad, but, unfortunately, little known in America.

Celery.—Although celery has now become a staple vegetable with all classes of people, the home-gardener is likely not to attempt its culture; yet it is not difficult to raise in small quantities in most any good garden land. While the commercial celery is largely grown on reclaimed swamp lands, such areas are not at all essential to its cultivation.

The self-blanching varieties have simplified the culture of celery so that the amateur, as well as the expert, may have a good supply at least six months of the year. The so-called new culture, which consists of setting the plants close together and causing them to shade each other, can be recommended for the garden when a supply of well-rotted manure is to had, and when any amount of water is available. This method is as follows: Fork or spade into the soil a large quantity of manure to the depth of 10 to 12 inches; pulverize the soil until the ground for the depth of 4 to 6 inches is in very fine condition. Then set the plants in rows 10 inches apart and the plants but 5 or 6 inches apart in the rows. It will be seen that plants set as close as this will soon fill the soil with a mass of roots and must have large amounts of plant-food, as well as a large quantity of water; and the making of such a bed can be recommended only to those who can supply these needs.

The common practice in home gardens is to plow or dig a shallow trench, setting the plants in the bottom and hoeing in the soil as the plants grow. The distance apart of the rows and plants will depend on the varieties. For the dwarf varieties, such as White Plume, Golden Self-blanching, and others of this type, the rows may be as close as 3 feet and the plants 6 inches in the rows. For the large-growing varieties, as Kalamazoo, Giant Pascal, and, in fact, most of the late varieties, the rows may be 4 1/2 to 5 feet apart and the plants 7 or 8 inches in the row.

The seed for an early crop should be sown in February or early in March in shallow boxes, which may be placed in a hotbed or sunny window, or sown directly in the soil of a hotbed. Cover the seeds thinly and press the soil firmly over them. When the seedling plants are about 1 inch high, they should be transplanted to other boxes or hotbeds, setting the plants 1 inch apart in rows 3 inches apart. At this transplanting, as with the following ones, the tall leaves should be cut or pinched off, leaving only the upright growth, as with the utmost care it is almost impossible to prevent the outside leafstalks from wilting down and dying. The roots should also be trimmed back at each transplanting in order to increase the feeding roots. The plants should be set as deep as possible, care being taken, however, not to allow the heart of the plant to be covered up. The varieties usually grown for an early crop are the so-called self-blanching varieties. They may be made fit for the table with much less labor than the late crop, the shade required to blanch the stalks being much less. When only a few short rows are grown in a private garden, screens of lath may be made by driving stakes on each side of the row and tacking lath on, leaving spaces of an inch or more for the light to enter; or each head may be wrapped in paper, or a tile drain pipe may be set over the plant. In fact, any material that will exclude the light will render the stalks white and brittle.

The seed for the main or fall crop should be sown in April or early May in a seed-bed prepared by forking short well-rotted manure into a fine soil, sowing the seed thinly in rows 8 or 10 inches apart, covering the seed lightly and firming over the seed with the feet, hoe, or back of a spade. This seed-bed should be kept moist at all times until the seed germinates, either by close attention to watering or by a lath screen. The use of a piece of cloth laid directly on the soil, and the bed wet through the cloth, is often recommended, and if the cloth is always wet and taken off the bed as soon as the seed sprouts, it may be used. After the young plants have grown to the height of 1 or 2 inches they must be thinned out, leaving the plants so that they do not touch each other, and transplanting those thinned—if wanted—to other ground prepared in the same manner as the seed-bed. All these plants may be sheared or cut back to induce stockiness.

An ounce of seed will furnish about three thousand plants.