$2 Download. Garden Help. 1877 – 130p

CHICKORY

The only kind to grow, if one wishes to raise a substitute for

coffee, is the Large Rooted Magdenburg. It is used in the adulteration

of coffee and the leaves ai-e liked by some as a salad.

It has little commercial value and is prominent among plants for

being distasteful to army worms- The leaves, used to cover other

plants, make resistance and partial protection.

COLLARDS

This plant of the cabbage family is used by some as a sub stitute

for cabbage. It has a tall stem covered with miniature

rosettes that have the flavor of the cabbage. It is known as

Creole or Georgia Collards and furnishes an excellent supply of

green feed for poultry. 8oAvn in the cool months from February

to May it is preferred to wrinkled kale for green feed for chickens.

Sow and treat the same as cabliage.

CRESS

Really a window garden relish, can be sown in a bowl and

set in the window and in a few days you can cut it off close to

the soil and have a delicious salad, or relish like lettuce. Pepper

grass is its other name, as it is really a warm member of the vege table

family. Sow it very thickly. Write your name in the soil

and carefully sow the seed and, if kept moist, in four days it will

be up and your signature plainly set in the soil green and verdant.

You can repeat the sowing and if you only have a wnndow and a

bowl of soil you can have a growing garden in your room.

Entirely distinct is Water Cress which delights to fill up a

bubbling spring or a running stream of shallow water. Like its

little name-sake, it is used as j-ou would lettuce. It is altogether

an aquatic plant and seed sown by the waters mhII give you re turns

for years to come, if properly cut and preserved.

CORN SALAD

This plant is sown in the wet months and used as lettuce which

it resembles. Some kinds are disposed to make heads, but it has

never filled the place of good well-grown lettuce. It is in the

substitute list and of Italian origin and preference.

GARDENHELPS 47

CELERY

Celery is one of the import;! nt prodiiets of California. Any where

on moist, partly peat land it can l)e grown to best advant age,

as is done on the peat lands of Orange eonnty. There are

river bottoms adjoining the sea in San Diego and other counties

that can be sneeessfull\' used. Hut celery can be raised in any

good permeable garden soil provided the important consideration

is met: It mnst be kept n)oist. as the plant is of semi-a(inatie origin

and if deprived of a sufficient amount of water to keep it advanc ing

rapidly it soon runs to seed. It is most successfully grown in

the winter and autumn months, endures very well any frosts that

may come in interior valleys, ])ut does not staiul the heat well

enough to make its culture jirotitable in the summer months.

Ordinary garden soil can b{» well adapted by a liberal supply of

well rotted inanure and b^ the aid of deep digging and trenching

similar to work done in a:-pai*agus culture.

Celery is sown in a seed bed and transplanted. The seed is

small but not hard to germinate, if it is kept in equal temperature

never sodden, never dr\-. Cover seed lightly because it is small

and will not come through a heavy load of soil. Sow in a seed l)ed

and when the plants are uji thin to aI)out one plant to the square

inch. When they are three inches high, clip off the tops about

half way; and when they get four inches or more high clip l)ack

again. This is to give root jxjwer. Keep moist and in about a

week or ten days transplant carefully without disturbing the

roots, taking a good chiudv of soil with them, to the shallow furrow

you have previously prepared. Set al)out six inches apart. A

wooden dibble to drive down and pull out is a good tool for mak ing

the hole to put the plant in. Put it doAvn straight and firm

the soil well around the plant before you leave it. Keep the soil

aAvay from the plant instead of drawing it up to it until it is a

foot and a half high. Then ]iull the earth up to the stalks to

blanch or whiten them. The Chinaman wraps strips of gunny

sack around the plants to blanch them. It takes about three

weeks to satisfactorally blanch the White Plume variety.

There should be four cool months in which to grow the celery.

Commercially it is harvested aiul sent east in the winter so the

seed should be sown so as to nu-et the Thanksgiving and Christmas

demand. To do this, it must be sown in summer, sav August, and