Part 8 (1/2)
If protected from frost, the plants will yield all winter. They may be easily transplanted in cold frames. These should be placed in some warm, sheltered spot and the plants set in them 4 by 6 inches. Mats or shutters will be needed in only the coldest weather. Half a dozen to a dozen stalks make the usual bunch and retail for 2 or 3 cents.
In the home garden, parsley may be sown as an edging for flower beds and borders. For such purpose it is best to sow the seed thickly during late October or November in double rows close together, say 3 or 4 inches.
Sown at that time, the plants may be expected to appear earlier than if spring sown and to form a ribbon of verdure which will remain green not only all the growing season, but well into winter if desired. It is best, however, to dig them up in the fall and resow for the year succeeding.
For window culture, all that is needed is a box filled with rich soil.
The roots may be dug in the fall and planted in the box. A sunny window is best, but any window will do. If s.p.a.ce is at a premium, a nail keg may be made to yield a large amount of leaves. Not only may the tops be filled with plants, but the sides also. Holes should be bored in the staves about 4 inches apart. (See ill.u.s.tration, page 2.) A layer of earth is placed in the bottom as deep as the lowest tier of holes. Then roots are pushed through these holes and a second layer of earth put in.
The process is repeated till the keg is full. Then plants are set on the top. As the keg is being filled the earth should be packed very firmly, both around the plants and in the keg. When full the soil should be thoroughly soaked and allowed to drain before being taken to the window.
To insure a supply of water for all the plants, a short piece of pipe should be placed in the center of the keg so as to reach about half way toward the bottom. This will enable water to reach the plants placed in the lower tiers of holes. If the leaves look yellow at any time, they may need water or a little manure water.
As parsley is grown for its leaves, it can scarcely be over fertilized.
Like cabbage, but, of course, upon a smaller scale, it is a gross feeder. It demands that plenty of nitrogenous food be in the soil. That is, the soil should be well supplied with humus, preferably derived from decaying leguminous crops or from stable manure. A favorite commercial fertilizer for parsley consists of 3 per cent nitrogen, 8 per cent potash and 9 per cent phosphoric acid applied in the drills at the rate of 600 to 900 pounds to the acre in two or three applications--especially the nitrogen, to supply which nitrate of soda is the most popular material.
A common practice among market gardeners in the neighborhood of New York has been to sow the seed in their cold frames between rows of lettuce transplanted during March or early April. The lettuce is cut in May, by which time the parsley is getting up. When grown by this plan the crop may be secured four or five weeks earlier than if the seed is sown in the open ground. The first cutting may be made during June. After this first cutting has been made the market usually becomes overstocked and the price falls, so many growers do not cut again until early September when they cut and destroy the leaves preparatory to securing an autumn and winter supply.
When the weather becomes cool and when the plants have developed a new and st.u.r.dy rosette of leaves, they are transplanted in shallow trenches either in cold frames, in cool greenhouses (lettuce and violet houses), under the benches of greenhouses, or, in fact, any convenient place that is not likely to prove satisfactory for growing plants that require more heat and light.
This method, it must be said, is not now as popular near the large cities as before the development of the great trucking fields in the Atlantic coast states; but it is a thoroughly practical plan and well worth practicing in the neighborhood of smaller cities and towns not adequately supplied with this garnis.h.i.+ng and flavoring herb.
A fair return from a cold frame to which the plants have been transplanted ranges from $3 to $7 during the winter months. Since many sashes are stored during this season, such a possible return deserves to be considered. The total annual yield from an acre by this method may vary from $500 to $800 or even more--gross. By the ordinary field method from $150 to $300 is the usual range. Instead of throwing away the leaves cut in September, it should be profitable to dry these leaves and sell them in tins or jars for flavoring.
When it is desired to supply the demand for American seed, which is preferred to European, the plants may be managed in any of the ways already mentioned, either allowed to remain in the field or transplanted to cold frames, or greenhouses. If left in the field, they should be partially buried with litter or coa.r.s.e manure. As the ground will not be occupied more than a third of the second season, a crop of early beets, forcing carrots, radishes, lettuce or some other quick-maturing crop may be sown between the rows of parsley plants. Such crops will mature by the time the parsley seed is harvested in late May or early June, and the ground can then be plowed and fitted for some late crop such as early maturing but late-sown sweet corn, celery, dwarf peas, late beets or string beans.
When seed is desired, every imperfect or undesirable plant should be rooted out and destroyed, so that none but the best can fertilize each other. In early spring the litter must be either removed from the plants and the ground between the rows given a cultivation to loosen the surface, or it may be raked between the rows and allowed to remain until after seed harvest. In this latter case, of course, no other crop can be grown.
Like celery seed, parsley seed ripens very irregularly, some umbels being ready to cut from one to three weeks earlier than others. This quality of the plant may be bred out by keeping the earliest maturing seed separate from the later maturing and choosing this for producing subsequent seed crops. By such selection one to three weeks may be saved in later seasons, a saving of time not to be ignored in gardening operations.
In ordinary seed production the heads are cut when the bulk of the seed is brown or at least dark colored. The stalks are cut carefully, to avoid shattering the seed off. They are laid upon sheets of duck or canvas and threshed very lightly, at once, to remove only the ripest seed. Then the stalks are spread thinly on shutters or sheets in the sun for two days and threshed again. At that time all seed ripe enough to germinate will fall off. Both lots of seed must be spread thinly on the sheets in an airy shed or loft and turned daily for 10 days or two weeks to make sure they are thoroughly dry before being screened in a fanning mill and stored in sacks hung in a loft.
_Varieties._--There are four well-defined groups of parsley varieties; common or plain, curled or moss-leaved, fern-leaved, and Hamburg. The last is also known as turnip-rooted or large-rooted. The objections to plain parsley are that it is not as ornamental as moss-leaved or fern-leaved sorts, and because it may be mistaken for fools parsley, a plant reputed to be more or less poisonous.
In the curled varieties the leaves are more or less deeply cut and the segments reflexed to a greater or less extent, sometimes even to the extent of showing the lighter green undersides. In this group are several subvarieties, distinguished by minor differences, such as extent of reflexing and size of the plants.
In the fern-leaved group the very dark green leaves are not curled but divided into numerous threadlike segments which give the plant a very delicate and dainty appearance.
Hamburg, turnip-rooted or large-rooted parsley, is little grown in America. It is not used as a garnish or an herb, but the root is cooked as a vegetable like carrots or beets. These roots resemble those of parsnips. They are often 6 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. Their cultivation is like that of parsnips. They are cooked and served like carrots. In flavor, they resemble celeriac or turnip-rooted celery, but are not so pleasing. In Germany the plant is rather popular, but, except by our German gardeners, it has been little cultivated in this country.
_Uses._--The Germans use both roots and tops for cooking; the former as a boiled vegetable, the latter as a potherb. In English cookery the leaves are more extensively used for seasoning frica.s.sees and dressings for mild meats, such as chicken and veal, than perhaps anything else. In American cookery parsley is also popular for this purpose, but is most extensively used as a garnish. In many countries the green leaves are mixed with salads to add flavor. Often, especially among the Germans, the minced green leaves are mixed with other vegetables just before being served. For instance, if a liberal dusting of finely minced parsley be added to peeled, boiled potatoes, immediately after draining, this vegetable will seem like a new dish of unusual delicacy. The potatoes may be either served whole or mashed with a little b.u.t.ter, milk and pepper.
=Pennyroyal= (_Mentha Pulegium_, Linn.), a perennial herb of the natural order l.a.b.i.atae, native of Europe and parts of Asia, found wild and naturalized throughout the civilized world in strong, moist soil on the borders of ponds and streams. Its square, prostrate stems, which readily take root at the nodes, bear roundish-oval, grayish-green, slightly hairy leaves and small lilac-blue flowers in whorled cl.u.s.ters of ten or a dozen, rising in tiers, one above another, at the nodes. The seed is light brown, oval and very small. Like most of its near relatives, pennyroyal is highly aromatic, perhaps even more so than any other mint.
The flavor is more pungent and acrid and less agreeable than that of spearmint or peppermint.
Ordinarily the plant is propagated by division like mint, or more rarely by cuttings. Cultivation is the same as that of mint. Plantations generally last for four or five years, and even longer, when well managed and on favorable soil. In England it is more extensively cultivated than in America for drying and for its oil, of which latter a yield of 12 pounds to the acre is considered good. The leaves, green or dried, are used abroad to flavor puddings and other culinary preparations, but the taste and odor are usually not pleasant to American and English palates and noses.
=Peppermint= (_Mentha piperita_, Linn.) is much the same in habit of growth as spearmint. It is a native of northern Europe, where it may be found in moist situations along stream banks and in waste lands. In America it is probably even more common as an escape than spearmint.
Like its relative, it has long been known and grown in gardens and fields, especially in Europe, Asia and the United States.
_Description._--Like spearmint, the plant has creeping rootstocks, which rapidly extend it, and often make it a troublesome weed in moist ground.
The stems are smaller than those of spearmint, not so tall, and are more purplish. They bear ovate, smooth leaves upon longer stalks than those of spearmint. The whorled cl.u.s.ters of little, reddish-violet flowers form loose, interrupted spikes. No seed is borne.