LEAVES AND STEMS WE EAT 149 



No vegetable responds more quickly to good 

 treatment than the children of the wild cabbage. 

 Rich soil, moist and fine and free from weeds, 

 produces the finest specimen plants. Quick 

 growth, uninterrupted by drought or neglect of 

 other sort, makes the biggest, tenderest leaves and 

 stalks, and they have the most delicate flavor. 

 The cool, moist climate of England makes it the 

 best place in the world to grow the whole cabbage 

 group. 



If the gardener neglects his cabbages they grow 

 tough and rank in taste, do not head solidly, and 

 finally burst open and "bolt to seed." Plant 

 the seeds of such neglected heads, and do not 

 tend them. The next crop is uglier than the 

 last. Save seed of these plants to sow, and let 

 alone. In a few generations what are our cab- 

 bages like? They have gone back to the old wild 

 cabbage form of the British coast. The gardener 

 says: "These plants revert to the original wild 



type." 



Just so your kohl-rabi and turnip-rooted cab- 

 bages will lose the plumpness and tenderness and 

 delicacy of flavor, unless fed and tended. So will 

 the cauliflowers and the kales, proving that their 

 ancestors were the same as those of the headed 

 cabbages, which alone keep the family name. 



