204 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



for hay, to be plowed under in the early spring. One thing which our gar- 

 deners have now learned from experience is that success with the cabbage 

 crop depends on the pedigree of the seed sown, and on its being grown in the 

 American climate. Seed produced in the moist climate of England will not 

 head with any certainty in our sunny climate. There has been a great deal 

 of talk of late years in regard to a Government seed control and the testing of 

 all seeds sold. The only test of any value, however, is the test that all of our 

 great seed houses now practice; testing them in the open ground under the 

 same conditions with which the purchaser has to contend. A laboratory test 

 of seeds tells only the percentage of them which will germinate, and gives no 

 information in regard to the seed stock from which they came. In fact, it 

 cannot even tell what variety they belong to. All gardeners know that the 

 more we improve the character of our plants and develop their valuable quali- 

 ties as table vegetables, and remove them from their natural wild condition, 

 the lower will be germinating power. The wild plant, which is the survival 

 of the strongest in the contest with other plants, has thrown all its strength 

 into the production of strong seed for the perpetuation of its species, while 

 the improved plant is not selected for its seed making power altogether, but 

 for the production of characters valuable to mankind, and hence loses a great 

 deal of the seed making vigor of the wild plant. So well is this fact known 

 to skilled gardeners the man who understands the value of pedigree in a seed 

 will prefer seeds of known origin with a low germinative power to those which 

 are shown to have a far higher germination percentage but are of uncertain 

 descent. This is particularly the case with our seed of early cabbages. While 

 the imported seed may show in the laboratory a higher percentage of germi- 

 nation, the wise gardener will take the American grown seed even if it shows 

 but half the germination. Good germinative power is, of course, important to 

 the grower, but good stock is the thing that gives the most valuable crop. 



The variety of cabbage used for the earliest crop in this country by our 

 market gardeners North and South is the Early Wakefield, sometimes called 

 the Early Jersey Wakefield from the fact that in New Jersey the American 

 strain was first developed from the English Wakefield cabbage. The enter- 

 prise of our seedsmen has caused several strains to be developed from the 

 original Jersey Wakefleld, which for a long time was not a well fixed type, 

 and now nearly every one of the leading seed houses has its particular strain 

 of Wakefield cabbage, any of which are great improvements on the original. 

 In the South, a particular strain is know as the Charleston Wakefield. It is 

 similar to the regular Early Wakefleld, but is larger in size of head and a little 

 later than the type form. In the early days of the Early Jersey Wakefield 

 cabbage the conical form of head, which is regarded as the type, was very 



