CAULIFLOWER IN CALIFORNIA. 229 



as to their longer season of growth, which has been noted. 

 The "Improved Half Dwarf" is the variety mostly grown. 



CAULIFLOWER. 



The cauliflower is one of the grandest vegetables in Cali- 

 fornia. It attains large size and superb quality, but it is 

 not universally grown, as is the cabbage, because it is 

 rather more tender and exacting and more rebellious under 

 neglect or deprivation. While it is perfectly simple and 

 easy for a person with any joy and zeal in gardening to 

 grow a grand cauliflower, the lack of these qualities will 

 yield distressing failures. He may busy himself with a fair 

 sort of cabbages, but his cauliflowers will point with gaunt 

 fingers at him instead of nestling down in tight masses of 

 snowy curds, as if to shame him for his ill-treatment of 

 them. For this reason cabbages are seen everywhere and 

 cauliflowers seldom, except in the market gardens or in 

 the fields where grown for distant shipment, which is about 

 half as large of cauliflowers as of cabbages. 



The growth of the cauliflower is in the main the same 

 as the cabbage, except that a little higher heat and greater 

 protection are needed for the young plants and a little 

 more diligent cultivation and faithful attention to mosture 

 supply for the later growth. The writer's observation is 

 that most cases of failure with cauliflower are attributable 

 to delay in starting the plants and planting out too late, 

 and to insufficient or intermitten moisture supply. Sum- 

 mer heading of cauliflower is difficult unless the plants are 

 started in the seed beds in the winter and planted out 

 early in the spring for a. spring start from the seed is 

 apt to amount to little. Winter heading is surer if the 

 plants are in the seed beds by June and in the ground, 

 properly irrigated and worked, in August. Besides the 

 error of starting at wrong times many plantings go wrong 

 toward the end of their course, through lack of work and 

 water on the home stretch. In the milder regions it is 

 possible to start so early that less attention, perhaps, has 

 to be given to -watering, but where the local climate re- 



