New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 65 
Considerable cabbage seed is now produced around Puget 
Sound, but for more than a quarter of a century Long Island - 
has been an important source of supply. The soil and climate of 
portions of the island seem admirably adapted to this crop. 
While many market gardeners at the western end of the island 
produce seed in limited quantities, the commercial phase of the 
industry is most developed at the eastern end in the region about 
Cutchogue. Here, cabbage seed fields of several acres are common 
and cabbage seed is one of the staple crops. 
METHOD OF SEED GROWING. 
On Long Island, stock seed of the desired variety is grown 
under the immediate supervision of the large seedsmen. This 
is furnished to the farmers who produce the commercial seed 
under cont'ract. The seed is sown so that the plants are ready 
to transplant early in August and do not reach maturity until 
cold weather. Early in November they are buried in shallow 
trenches to be set out again the following April. The flowers 
appear in May and the seed is ripe in July. It was formerly 
threshed by hand but a small threshing machine is now ysed by 
the larger growers. 
DISEASES OF THE PLANTS. 
While growing in the field the first season, the plants are sub- 
ject to all of the ordinary cabbage diseases and in some seasons 
black rot has been so destructive as to make the crop praciically 
a failure. While in the trenches in the winter a variable number 
of the plants rot. This is in small part the result of the black 
rot but is more largely due to soft rot caused by an entirely dif- 
ferent organism identical with or closely related to B. caroto- 
vorous Jones.*° A prominent seedsman who has been in the busi- 
ness extensively on the Island for over a quarter of a century 
estimates the annual loss, from rot, at t'wenty-five per ct. of the 
crop. In some cases the crop is a total loss. 
This soft rot occurring in the trenches or appearing after the 
plants have been reset has been under observation for a number 
of years and we hope to present some of the results of our 
observations in a later bulletin. 
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