192 



BRA 



THE UNIVERSAL HERBAL 



BRA 



planted on stubbles, after Wheat, Barley, Oats, or Beans; thi 

 land i ploughed up at Michaelmas, lies till spring, is then 

 ploughed again three or four times ; is manured with from 

 lifteun to twenty three loads of dung, or else with from twenty 

 to thirty loads of compost, to an acre, before the last plough- 

 ing, which lays the land in three-feet ridges, towards the end 

 of May or the beginning of June, in which state it must be 

 .eft for rain, to enable the farmer to plant. Some persons 

 spread the dung upon the stubble, and bury it with the first 

 ploughing; because, if the weather should set in dry at the 

 time of planting, the dung opens the soil too much, lets in 

 the drought, and thus destroys, or at least stunts, the plants. 

 The best method of raising, is to sow the seeds as early in 

 the spring as the weather will permit, (the end of February, 

 or beginning of March,) upon good land, well sheltered, dig- 

 ged, and dunged, on beds from four to five feet wide, for the 

 conveniency of cleaning them, and destroying the fly. Plants 

 may be thus obtained, of sufficient strength to plant out by 

 the third or fourth week in May, at the latest ; and these 

 plants will be in perfection by the third week in October, 

 and will continue to the end of March, or the middle of 

 April. The best seed, sown upon a poor soil without dung, 

 will produce many runaway plants ; these are also frequently 

 spoiled by being sown too thick. An ounce and half of seed 

 on a bed fourteen yards long, and five feet wide, will, allow- 

 ing for all accidents, produce two thousand good plants : 

 half a pound of seed is fully sufficient to produce plants for 

 an acre ; or a pound of seed, sown on ten rods of land, may 

 do for three acres, according to the goodness of the land, 

 and the season : seven thousand plants are fully sufficient for 

 an acre. Though spring plants are most commonly reputed 

 the best for general use, not so much on account of their size 

 a* their duration ; (because the slugs are apt to destroy much 

 of the autumn sowing in winter ; and because, by good 

 management, as large and heavy a Cabbage may be produced 

 from spring so wing:) yetsomepersonsare attached to sowing 

 in autumn, about the middle of August ; and pricking the 

 plants out into a warm place, where they may be sheltered 

 from very severe frost ; they may be thus planted out in 

 May, whereas the spring-sown ones can hardly ever be 

 planted out till near Midsummer, perhaps in a dry time, when 

 they will be scorched up, and are scarcely ever so large : it 

 is to be considered, however, that the great use of Cabbages 

 is for feed late in the spring, when the early-sown will be 

 run p to seed. Some persons prick out the young spring- 

 sown plants frum the seed-bed, which is certainly an advan- 

 tage to them, but is attended with too much expense and 

 trouble to those who cultivate this crop on n large scale. 

 As to planting, that operation depends upon the weather, 

 and may be performed as soon after the middle of May as 

 that will admit ; but it is vain to attempt it until there has 

 been a ground-rain, and then it must be done as quickly as 

 possiWe : the "plants are commonly set in one row on each 

 ridge, at the distance of two or three feet, or, according to 

 some, of four ; most persons plant them two feet and a half 

 asunder in the rows : some are for small distances, as two 

 feet, or eighteen inches ; others are for larger, as three feet ; 

 the distance onght, however, to be regulated by the size of 

 the Cabbage, and the strength of the soil : they should be 

 planted wide enough to admit of being cleared with the 

 'pkmgh, and yet so near as to afford a full crop. It must be 

 a great advantage, on land that will admit of it, to plant them 

 at equal distances every way, so that the plough may pass 

 crosswise as well as longwise, between Ihe rows, in cleaning 

 them. In the common practice, the rows are kept clean by 

 hand-hoeing ; and at the same time, an ^ clods that may have 



rolled on the plants, in ploughing between the rows, are re- 

 moved. About three weeks after planting, taking the oppor- 

 tunity of rain, replant whatever vacancies may have arisen 

 from failures. Cabbages are applied to feeding milch cows, 

 to fattening bullocks, sheep, and swine ; we have not heard 

 of their being given to horses : and yet it is probable, that 

 either alone, or mixed with chaff, or cut-meat, they may be 

 a valuable horse feed. They are very generally and success- 

 fully applied to feeding milch cows, in the great dairy farms 

 of High Suffolk ; where they have eight or ten acres of the 

 great Scotch and American Cabbage, to forty cows ; and in 

 some parts they are of opinion, that one good acre of Cab- 

 bages will do for seven or eight cows, yielding as much food 

 as three acres of Turnips, and making the cows give more 

 and better butter. A more common proportion, however, is, 

 four cows to an acre, without hay or straw, and six or seven 

 with straw and some hay : one acre and one rood, producing 

 forty-five tons of Cabbages, fed nine cows and a bull thirteen 

 weeks and two days. The report concerning the effect of 

 Cabbages upon milk, is different ; some asserting that the 

 butter is as bad as from Turnips ; others, that they yield not 

 only more milk, but better butter. Cabbages are also reputed 

 excellent fbrweaning calves ; Turnips beingapt to give them 

 the garget, which Cabbages never do. In fattening beasts, 

 three quarters of an acre of a middling crop, will do for two 

 beasts of fifty stone each, that have had the summer grass. 

 A middling bullock will eat two hundred pounds of Cab- 

 buges in twenty-four hours, and therefore a score may be 

 kept on an acre for nearly a month, if the crop be tolerably 

 good. Fifteen fatting oxen, nine hundred weight each when 

 fat, were kept from the fifth of November to the thirty-first 

 of December, that is, eight weeks, on two acres of autumn- 

 sown Cabbages, with the addition of four tons of hay: upon 

 the whole, an acre of Cabbages is supposed to fatten one 

 beast in four more than Turnips, and all in two-thirds of the 

 time. Another circumstance of consequence to the grazier, 

 is, that they are said to have a remarkable effect in laying 

 on the fat on the grazier's points. With respect to sheep, 

 one of twenty pounds a quarter, will eat fifteen pound of 

 Cabbage in twenty-four hours ; one acre, therefore, will nearly 

 maintain two hundred sheep a month, if it be a good crop. 

 Thirteen fat wethers, who had nothing else to cut, except 

 what they picked up, in open weather, on a bare grass-field, 

 onsumed one load in a week, that is, in the proportion of 

 an acre to twenty-six sheep, for one hundred and twenty 

 days, or more than sixteen weeks. When the autumn-sown 

 ilants run up to seed in April, sheep will ent every morsel 

 of them clean up, when they will not touch a Turnip. When 

 ;he plants are suffered to run up, that part of the land should 

 lave a light dressing of pigeon dung, soot, or malt-dust, 

 ;o make it amends for supporting theCabbage-stalks so much 

 onger. Hogs do very well on Cabbages, and prefer them to 

 IWnips ; for when they get into a field containiag both, they 

 constantly take to the former, and will scarcely touch the 

 atter : by sowing early in the spring, or by sowing some in 

 autumn, a succession of Cabbages may be obtained, from the 

 hird week in October, or a month after Michaelmas, to the 

 nd of March ; or, if desired, even to the middle or end of 

 April : they ought, however, in the g*neral o|union, to be 

 off by the middle of March, because they then shoot, and 

 exhaust the land. How valuable, therefore, mast this crop 

 e, thus adapted as it is to feeding milch kine, bullocks, 

 sheep, &c. and which is in perfection during tli months of 

 ^ebruary, March, and part f April ; when the anxiety of 

 armers, purticBlarlf of those who keep large flocks for a 

 suppry of food, is at the height ! On moist soils, Tamps, 



