Blanching

About three months elapse between the time of sowing and the fitness of the plants for blanching. This operation, if conducted properly, will be completed in from ten to fourteen days in summer, or in three or four weeks in winter. To blanch the plants it is the most common practice to tie their leaves together, to place tiles or pieces of board upon them, or to cover them with garden-pots; whilst some recommend their leaves to be tied together, and then to be covered up to their tips with mould, making it rise to an apex, so as to throw off excessive rains. All these methods succeed in dry seasons; but in wet ones the plants, treated according to any of them, are liable to decay.

The one which succeeds best in all seasons is to fold the leaves round the heart as much as possible in their natural position; and being tied together with a shred of bass-mat, covered up entirely with coal-ashes in the form of a cone, the surface being rendered firm and smooth with the trowel. Sand will do, but ashes are equally unretentive of moisture, whilst they are much superior in absorbing heat, which is so beneficial in the hastening of the process. If the simple mode of drawing the leaves together is adopted to effect this etiolation, they must be tied very close, and, in a week after the first tying, a second ligature must be passed round the middle of the plant to prevent the heart-leaves bursting out. A dry afternoon, when the plants are entirely free from moisture, should be selected, whichever mode is adopted for this concluding operation.

A very excellent mode is to spread over the surface of the bed about an inch in depth of pit-sand, and covering each plant with a small pot made of earthenware, painted both within and on the outside to exclude the wet - that worst hindrance of blanching. To avoid this, the pots should be taken off daily for a quarter of an hour, and their in-sides wiped dry. A common garden-pot will do if the hole be closely stopped; but a sea-kale pot in miniature, is to be preferred; and if made of zinc or other metal, it would be better, because not porous and admissive of moisture. - Johnson's Gard. Almanack.

To Obtain Seed

The finest and soundest plants should be selected of the lastplantation,and which most agree with the characteristics of the respective varieties. For a small family three or four plants of each variety will produce sufficient. These should be taken in March, and planted beneath a south fence, about a foot from it and eighteen inches apart. As the flower-stem advances it should be fastened to a stake; or, if they are placed beneath palings, by a string, to be gathered as the seed upon it ripens: for if none are gathered until the whole plant is changing colour, the first ripened and best seed will have scattered and be lost, so wide is the difference of time between the several branches of the same plant ripening their seed. Each branch must be laid, as it is cut, upon a cloth in the sun; and when perfectly dry, the seed beaten out, cleansed, and stored.