25 APRIL 1941, Page 14

In the Garden .

It is now almost impossible to get leek-seed. Plants from an nut" door sowing are, anyway, often small, and it will pay to try plants raised from a January sowing. Pricked out into fairly deep boxes and kept sheltered for a week or two, they will make early and enormous plants. The same procedure for onions will give large and good keeping bulbs. Celery is often regarded as an expert's crop. The chief troubles are late sowing, lock of water and premature ed relung up. The days of six-feet celery are gone but a long season of rid* nourished growth is still essential. The water-problem wit be partially solved if trenches are dug on the north side of the runner - bean rows, so that the plant will have some shade from hot sun. EadY earthing, i.e., before the plants are 18 inches high, will Pr'l--nce twisted roots. Otherwise there are no tracks about this incomParnble crop—prices of which, by the way, went as high as tenpence or a shilling_a head last win' ter. And here, I think, one might hAnd a bouquet to seedsmen, whose generosity remains unaffected by dit- cult times. Half a fourpenny packet of tomato-seed produced. for me, sixteen .dozen plants; ball a fourpenny packet of celery lbw'