CABBAGES 



what a farmer may do in the worst of years : and, when I consider 

 what the summer has been, I look at my Cabbages and Ruta Baga 

 with surprize as well as with satisfaction. 



CABBAGES. 



1 66. I had some hogs to keep, and, as my Swedish Turnips 

 (Ruta Baga) would be gone by July, or before, I wished them to be 

 succeeded by cabbages. I made a hot-bed on the zoth of March, 

 which ought to have been made more than a month earlier ; but 

 I had been in Pennsylvania, and did not return home till the i^th 

 of March. It requires a little time to mix and turn the dung in 

 order to prepare it for a hot-bed ; so that mine was not a very good 

 one ; and then my frame was hastily patched up, and its covering 

 consisted of some old broken sashes of windows. A very shabby 

 concern ; but, in this bed I sowed cabbages and cauliflowers. 

 The seed came up, and the plants, though standing too thick, 

 grew pretty well. From this bed, they would, if I had had time, 

 been transplanted into another, at about two and a half or three 

 inches apart. But, such as they were, very much drawn up, I 

 began planting them out as soon as they were about four inches 

 high. 



167. It was the I2th of May before they attained this height, 

 and I then began planting them out in a piece of ground, pretty 

 good, and deeply ploughed by oxen. My cauliflowers, of which 

 there were about three thousand, were too late to flower, which 

 they never will do, unless the flower have begun to shew itself 

 before the great heat comes. However, these plants grew very 

 large, and afforded a great quantity of food for pigs. The outside 

 leaves and stems were eaten by sows, store-pigs, a cow, and some 

 oxen ; the hearts, which were very tender and nearly of the 

 Cauliflower-taste, were boiled in a large cast-iron caldron, and, 

 mixed with a little rye-meal, given to sows and young pigs. I 

 should suppose, that these three thousand plants weighed twelve 

 hundred pounds, and they stood upon about half an acre of land. 

 I gave these to the animals early in July. 



1 68. The Cabbages, sown in the bed, consisted partly of Early 

 Yorks, the seed of which had been sent me along with the Cauli 

 flower seed, from England, and had readied me at Harrisburgh 

 in Pennsylvania ; and partly of plants, the seed of which had been 

 given me by Mr. JAMES PAUL, Senior, of Bustleton, as I was on 

 my return home. And this gave me a pretty good opportunity 

 of ascertaining the fact as to the degenerating of cabbage seed. Mr. 

 Paul who attended very minutely to all such matters ; who took 

 great delight in his garden ; who was a reading as well as a prac 

 tical farmer, told me, when he gave me the seed, that it would not 



go 



