QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 11 



Bloomsdale. It is an excellent variety. The seed is thorny, hence its 

 name. 



Ever Ready is the darkest colored of all spinaches and slowest to shoot 

 to seed ; it is the best of the Long Standing sorts. 



Flanders is the largest seeded of all the varieties. Leaves, spear- 

 shaped, on long, erect stems ; it can thus be gathered generally free 

 from sand ; it is the third in order of maturity. Round Savoy is 

 round seeded and round leaved, habit of growth not as erect as Blooms- 

 dale, and not so much savoyed, the fourth in order of development to 

 cutting size. 



Viroflay, a mammoth-leaved variety, very showy, the fifth in order of 

 maturity. Long Standing, the latest of all spinach to arrive at a cut- 

 ting stage ; leaves round on the edges, exceedingly deep green, leathery, 

 inclined to lay flat on the earth, slow to shoot to seed, hence its name. 



53. Q. When should cabbage seed be sown ? Cabbage. 



A. There is not a month in the year nor a day in the month when cab- 

 bage is not being sown in some of the gardening sections of the country. 

 It is therefore impossible to name periods for sowing. That must be de- 

 termined by the practice of each section. In a general way, however, it 

 may be said that cabbage seed should be sown in February for an early 

 Summer crop, and April or May for an Autumn crop, and in September 

 and October for an early Spring crop. The seed is sown in rows of a 

 foot apart, and after the plants reach a height of three or four inches they 

 are pulled up and transplanted to permanent locations, where they are set 

 in rows at three or four feet and at intervals of one-and-a-half to two feet 

 in the row. 



The question is of frequent occurrence : Why cannot private families 

 have head cabbage as early as market gardeners? Simply because of 

 imperfect culture and insufficient manuring. To produce a successful 

 crop of cabbage the soil must naturally or artificially contain potash, 

 phosphate, nitrogen. These are all found in good barnyard manure and 

 in some commercial fertilizers. If these resources are not available, the 

 potash can be had in kainit, the phosphoric acid in bone, or better, in 

 superphosphate ; the nitrogen in dried blood, meat or fish. 



The market gardener feeds his cabbage crop without stint and with 

 the rankest food, frequently plows in the manure in the Autumn, turns it 

 up in the Spring and thoroughly incorporates it with the soil ; plants 

 early, cultivates deeply, not simply tickling the surface with the hand- 

 hoe, but uses the plow and horse-hoe ; that cannot always be done in 

 small family gardens, but the spade can be used, and that is the next best 

 thing. Use it freely, dig deeply, and the result will surprise, those who 

 have heretofore relied on the hoe alone. 



Cabbages grown South for shipment in the Spring sometimes do not 

 head uniformly, the result of checking by cold. The damage very fre- 

 quently is not apparent till the heading season, when the crop appears to 

 be a mixture of many sorts, sqme plants shooting to seed ; fields of difier- 



