If the bed is made in spring, perform the work as early as possible, making the bed very rich, mellow, and fine.  Coarse manures, cold, poor, lumpy soil, leave scarcely a ghost of a chance for success.  The plants should be thinned to two inches from one another, and when five inches high, shear them back to three inches.  When they have made another good growth, shear them back again.  The plants are thus made stocky.  In our latitude I try to set out celery, whether raised or bought, between the twenty-fifth of June and the fifteenth of July.  This latitude enables us to avoid a spell of hot, dry weather.

There are two distinct classes of celery—­the tall-growing sorts, and the dwarf varieties.  A few years ago the former class was grown generally; trenches were dug, and their bottoms well enriched to receive the plants.  Now the dwarf kinds are proving their superiority, by yielding a larger amount of crisp, tender heart than is found between long coarse stalks of the tall sorts.  Dwarf celery requires less labor also, for it can be set on the surface and much closer together, the rows three feet apart, and the plants six inches in the row.  Dig all the ground thoroughly, then, beginning on one side of the plot, stretch a line along it, and fork under a foot-wide strip of three or four inches of compost, not raw manure.  By this course the soil where the row is to be is made very rich and mellow.  Set out the plants at once while the ground is fresh and moist.  If the row is ten feet long, you will want twenty plants; if fifteen, thirty plants; or two plants to every foot of row.  Having set out one row, move the line forward three feet, and prepare and set out another row in precisely the same manner.  Continue this process until the plot selected is occupied.  If the plants have been grown in your own garden, much is gained by soaking the ground round them in the evening, and removing them to the rows in the cool of the morning.  This abundant moisture will cause the soil to cling to the roots if handled gently, and the plants will scarcely know that they have been moved.  When setting I usually trim off the greater part of the foliage.  When all the leaves are left, the roots, not established, cannot keep pace with the evaporation.  Always keep the roots moist and unshrivelled, and the heart intact, and the plants are safe.  If no rain follows setting immediately, water the plants thoroughly—­don’t be satisfied with a mere sprinkling of the surface—­and shade from the hot sun until the plants start to grow.  One of the chief requisites in putting out a celery plant, and indeed almost any plant, is to press the soil firmly round, against, and over the roots.  This excludes the air, and the new rootlets form rapidly.  Neither bury the heart nor leave any part of the root exposed.