CABBAGES 205 



where the production of late cabbages is a troublesome and uncertain matter. 

 Winter cabbages, coming in on land that has been heavily manured for some 

 early crop, will not need as heavy manuring as the early crop; still, it is im- 

 portant that there should be no lack of plant food. We have found that 

 half the quantity advised for the early crop will answer the needs of the fall 

 crop, provided they are urged along by two or three dressings of nitrate of 

 soda at the rate of 50 pounds per acre at each dressing. In the North, the 

 seed for the late crop should be sown in March or April, in a fairly fertile 

 soil, and the plants grown to a good size before setting in June and July. 

 There is, in some parts of the country, an old notion among farmers that the 

 cabbages should not be worked during the dog days, and the consequence is 

 that we often see a lot of weedy, and starved cabbages that get so stunted that 

 they head prematurely and never make fine cabbages. Clean, rapid culture is 

 as essential to good cabbages as to any other crop, and the man who watches 

 the moon or the dog star, will never get the crop his more intelligent neigh- 

 bors do. Cabbage plants from the very start should never be allowed to get 



stunted in any way. 







LATE CABBAGES IN THE SOUTH. 



In the States south of Virginia, the great difficulty in all the lower 

 country has always been so great in getting good winter cabbages, that the 

 people have finally settled down to the notion that none but the loose, open- 

 headed collard is available to them. While it is true that a well blanched 

 collard is not a bad winter vegetable, there is no reason why, with proper care, 

 good, hard-headed cabbages may not be grown in the South. The chief rea- 

 son for the general failure has arisen, we believe, from the fact that Southern 

 gardeners have generally followed too closely Northern methods for the pro- 

 duction of the plants, and have sown the seed too early to be carried through 

 the long hot summers of the South. The drought of summer saps the vitality 

 of the plants, and they succumb before the time they should be set for head- 

 ing. Anywhere on the Atlantic seaboard south of Virginia late cabbage seed 

 should never be sown till the first of August. Usually we have abundant 

 rains in August, but the important point in the production of the plants is 

 that they shall never lack for moisture. Hence the seed should be sown in 

 soil naturally moist and very fertile, or there should be some arrangement for 

 supplying them with artificial irrigation. The object is to get, large and 

 strong, short-stemmed plants by the first of September, which is early enough 

 to set the plants. Hence the seed should be sown rather thinly, or the plants 

 transplanted in beds when' very small, to give them more room to develop. 

 The soil for the late crop must not be a dry and thirsty one, 



