166 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



The plants are quite hardy and in most parts of California bring 

 their crop in the winter from plants set out in succession during the 

 previous spring and summer. They do best in the cool, summer 

 climate of the coast. Wherever grown they must have abundant 

 moisture all summer. The culture is the same as for cabbage except 

 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 California. 

 It attains large size and superb quality, but it is not universally 

 grown, as is the cabbage, because it is rather more tender and exact- 

 ing and more rebellious under neglect or deprivation. While it is 

 perfectly simple and easy for a person with any joy and zeal in gar- 

 dening 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 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 the product 

 being half as large of cauliflower as of cabbage. The largest cauli- 

 flower producer of California, J. N. Teague of southern California, 

 grows regularly 160 acres a year and ships over one hundred car- 

 loads from his own fields. He arranges to grow early, middle and 

 late varieties and gives the trade almost a continuous supply. 



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 moisture supply for the later growth. The 

 writer's observation is that most cases of failure with cauliflowers 

 are attributable to delay in starting the plants and planting out too 

 late, and to insufficient or intermittent moisture supply. Summer 

 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 head- 

 ing is surer if the plants are in the seed-beds by June and in 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 atten- 

 tion, perhaps, has to be given to watering, but where the local climate 

 requires spring planting the reason for failure is generally to be seen 

 in the hard, dry ground on which the plants strive in vain to answer 

 the grower's expectations. 



Shipping Requirements. The following account of selecting 

 cauliflowers for shipment in a San Francisco warehouse gives some 

 good hints of requirements: 



