Florida Agricultural Experiment Station


 CULTURAL PROCEDURE FOLLOWED
 Before entering into a detailed description of the experimental
work involved in the determination of the fertility program to
be suggested for the commercial growing of celery in the Ever-
glades, it is desirable that certain methods involved in the grow-
ing of the crops be explained. The cultural procedure followed
is one of these essential parts of the experimental program.
 As far as possible standard commercial cultural methods were
used in all of this work. The seedlings were started in raised
seedbeds in the open field and protected by cloth shades until
the seedlings were well established, primarily for the purpose of
keeping the upper surface of the beds from drying out. These
seedbeds were pretreated with formaldehyde or other materials
for the control of damping-off fungi. The troughs between the
beds were used for irrigation purposes to keep water available
to the germinating seedlings. When the seedlings were well
established this surface irrigation was stopped and the shades
were removed. Weeding was done whenever necessary. The
seedlings in the beds also received one or more bordeaux sprays.
 The seedlings were planted to the fields either by hand, using
Negro labor, or by means of a commercial plant setting machine
(Fig. 2). The latter method is to be preferred over hand setting.
Plants were set in single rows 30 inches apart, with a 4-inch
spacing between plants. This arrangement is already standard-
ized commercially, and gives approximately 52,275 plants per
acre. At time of setting the water table was brought to the
field surface by means of portable pumps installed in the adjoin-
ing ditches. Water from these ditches backed up through the
mole drains and moved to the soil surface in a short time, thus
making conditions for setting satisfactory. The water table
was allowed to drop to its normal level as soon as the plants
became reestablished in the field.
 A regular spray program was followed, in that plants in the
 field were sprayed weekly until papered for blanching.
 The various fertilizer mixtures were made up in small lots,
 in a quantity sufficient for the plots, and mixed by hand in a
 small mixer. Due to the fact that the plots were relatively
 small the fertilizers were also spread by hand. For the most
 part the fertilizers utilized in these experiments were hand-
 distributed in the opened rows at a depth of three to four
 inches several days prior to the setting of the plants. In treat-