CHAPTER XXVII. 

 CAULIFLOWER. 



Of all the crops grown by the market gardener the cauliflower is the 

 one that calls for the highest skill and the heaviest fertilization. Good cauli- 

 flower can only be grown in the richest of soils, and the effort to produce it on 

 a thin, dry soil, even with the heaviest application of fertilizers, will usually 

 result in failure. Gorged with food, on a moist and retentive soil, and well 

 cultivated, it will reward the grower either North or South. The only differ- 

 ence is that the Southern grower must be content with the early crop, while 

 the Northern grower can produce the fall crop which the Southern man will 

 uniformly fail to get, owing to the difficulty in carrying the plants through 

 the hot weather. While on a suitable rich clay loam the gardener in the 

 North can produce a good crop of cauliflowers with commercial fertilizers 

 alone, if applied with a lavish hand, it is always better, where practicable, 

 to have a fair supply of stable manure in addition, as a means for making 

 more moisture in the soil and to supply the humus so valuable far this pur- 

 pose. Twenty tons of stable manure plowed under for some early crop will 

 make a good preparation for the cauliflower fall crop. For the direct prepar- 

 ation for the cauliflowers a ton or more per acre of the fertilizer mixture ad- 

 vised for early cabbages, should be well harrowed in before setting the plants, 

 and after they start, several dressings of 50 to 100 pounds per acre of nitrate 

 of soda will not be lost in the crop. The main point is to never allow them to 

 get the slightest check in their growth, for the result of such a check will be 

 the production of small buttons instead of heads. 



EARLY CAULIFLOWERS IN THE SOUTH. 



In the far South the plants can be treated in the same way we do the 

 early cabbages, by setting them in the fall, but north of Lower Georgia it is 

 better to grow the crop in frames along with winter lettuce. These frames may 



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