This vegetable is rarely grown, chiefly, as we believe, because few people know how to cook it properly. It is one of the meanest of dishes when meanly cooked - while one of the most enjoyable when it comes from the hands of a master in the culinary art. The Philadelphia Public Ledger gives the following advice in regard to it:

" Sea kale is a most delicate green vegetable. Pick it out sprig by sprig, wash it well and tie it up in bunches. Place these in a large stewpan full of fast-boiling salted water. As soon as the stalks are soft, lift each bunch carefully out of the water and lay them all on a sieve, cover them with a cloth and place the sieve in a hot place. In ten or fifteen minutes all the water will have drained off, when the bunches should be untied, the sprigs delicately disposed on a napkin in a dish and served with plain drawn butter or salad dressing in a sauce boat".

It is said not to pay in gardening to take much trouble to get things good, and hence we have to go altogether without the good things.

We suppose few in our country ever ate Sea Kale, yet it is one of the most delicious of all the vegetables raised in an English garden. Large earthen pots like old-fashioned bee-hives are placed over the plants in November, and the leaves from the trees grown on the grounds covered over several feet deep. The gentle warmth from the leaves starts plants early, and the huge pots are filled with crisp, blanched leaves. Manure will not do, as it brings the plant forward too rapidly and makes it very weak.

It is a trouble to do all this, but worth the trouble when grown. It is the great care required to make such nice things grow well that makes an educated gardener a necessity in the Old World; and possibly the disposition to do nothing in gardening, except what will take care of itself, one of the reasons why in our country the educated gardener is not in so great a demand.

Blanching Sea Kale

Referring to our note on Sea-Kale, a correspondent inquires whether it could not be blanched as celery is blanched, in cases where leaves are hard to obtain? We fancy not, or it would have been done long ago. It would probably rot. Still it is worth trying.