278 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



stems five and six feet high and proportionate luxuriance of leaf 

 growth. It usually volunteers freely wherever water stands, filling 

 road-side ditches and similar places. All that is needed is to pre- 

 pare a place suitable for its growth. By making new, zig-zag 

 ditches, just a little off the level or contour line, so the water will 

 run very slowly, one can grow any amount of cress that he can find 

 use or sale for and pluck it continuously from the old roots, but it 

 is not wise to have anything to do with it in a commercial way until 

 one understands it fully. It is used for garnishing, for salads, for 

 boiling as greens, etc. There is little chance of selling cress except 

 in cities, and there is small chance of profit far away from city 

 consumers because the cress will wilt before one can deliver it. 



DANDELION. Leontodon taraxacum. 



This plant has been widely introduced on the moister lands 

 throughout the state, and is used for salad and for boiling, as it 

 appears in abundance after the fall rains. The plant is also grown 

 to a limited extent by foreign-born market gardeners, and some of 

 the improved garden varieties have been introduced for their use. 

 It can be grown as lettuce is, whenever the soil carries moisture 

 enough. 



GHERKIN. Cucumis anguria. 



This plant is different from the small pickling cucumbers which 

 are often called gherkins. It is a creeping, branching plant, making 

 a dense mat of stems well laden with small, oval fruit covered with 

 spine-like protuberances. It endures heat and drought well, and 

 is very prolific even in interior situations in California. 



GINGER. Zingiber sp. 



Ginger is the commercial product of the roots of several species 

 of Zingiber some of them strictly tropical, others rather more 

 hardy but two conditions are essential: Freedom from frost and 

 assurance of continual soil moisture. The plant is propagated by 

 planting pieces of its fleshy roots which roughly resemble those of 

 the sweet flag. These are planted about three inches deep in a light 

 soil mulched with well-rotted manure and kept moist continually 

 by irrigation. Under such conditions the plant makes a large weight 

 of fleshy roots. Ginger root has been planted in California many 

 times during the last forty years or more and we hear now and 

 then of the plant growing in a garden, but there is probably no 

 chance of succeeding with it as we usually grow field crops, and 

 no one should plant it except in an experimental way. 



KITCHEN HERBS. 



It is hardly desirable to enumerate a list of culinary herbs. 

 Each housewife has her own information and preference and be- 

 yond that her cook-book is an encyclopedia. Suffice it to say that 



