CAULIFLOWER 209 



be covered with cotton cloth or glass, the glass being far better both for the 

 lettuce and the cauliflowers. Our method of growing the winter crop is as 

 follows, and we have been peculiarly successful in getting perfect crops of 

 fine and solid heads. We sow the seed about the last week in September, 

 in a very rich bed, and as soon as the plants are strong we set them in the 

 frames, putting six plants to each three by six feet sash. The remaining 

 space is then filled with Tennis Ball or Boston Market lettuce, which will 

 come off late in December or early January. By that time the cauliflowers 

 will begin to need all the room. We air them at all times when the weather 

 is at or above the freezing point, slipping sashes entirely off in sunny weather, 

 and covering only at night or when freezing threatens. By the middle of 

 February the cauliflowers are crowding against the glass, and are finally hard- 

 ened off and the glass removed to other frames to protect the tomato plants, 

 early beets, etc., as the cauliflowers from that time on need no protection. 

 If the plants have not been allowed to get any check from lack of moisture or 

 lack of food during the winter, the crop will come off in April, at a time when 

 they usually command a fair price. The crop is not so profitable as it once 

 was, owing to the quantities that come from the far South, where they grow 

 out side all winter, but it is still a fairly paying crop. The fall crop, as we 

 have said, belongs to the Northern gardener, and when well grown is uni- 

 formly a profitable crop. An abundance of food and plenty of moisture in 

 the soil to dissolve it, together with the best of culture, are the requisites for 

 a good crop of cauliflower if the seed stock is all right. In localities where 

 cotton seed meal cannot be readily had we would replace it in the fertilizer 

 advised for cabbages and cauliflowers, with an equivalent percentage of nitro- 

 gen, in the form of dried blood or tankage, and would increase the amount 

 of the acid phosphate to correspond. Where the acid phosphate is more costly 

 than dissolved bone black or slag meal we would use either of these as a source 

 for phosphoric acid, especially for the fall planted crop. 



CAULIFLOWER SEED AND VARIETIES. 



Cauliflower seed is little grown in this country, as our climate makes it 

 an extremely uncertain crop, at least on the Atlantic coast. Nearly all the 

 seed used in this country comes from Denmark. Of late years, however, 

 some growers in the far northwest, on Puget Sound, Washington, have been 

 producing a fine article. We have tried the Puget Sound seed and seed 

 obtained direct from Denmark, and the result of a single experiment was that 

 the Puget Sound seed was the better, since the plants grown from every 

 one made a head, though some were set in ridges in the fall like cabbages 



