CHAPTER XLVIII 



CABBAGES AND GEEENS 



SO valuable an element in the economy of the kitchen garden 

 is the cabbage and its allies that the ideal of the amateur with 

 sufficient room at his disposal should ever be " cabbages and 

 greens all the year round." And this aim can be successfully 

 attained if attention be paid to a few guiding principles which may 

 be set out thus : 



(1) The need for deep and thorough cultivation of the soil. 

 This point has been so often insisted upon hi the pre- 

 ceding pages that the reader may be tempted to regard 

 it as the inevitable prelude to every chapter, and for that 

 reason be inclined to consider its further repetition 

 unnecessary and irksome. But it is an all-important 

 feature of the science of vegetable culture, and hi no 

 part of the kitchen garden is it more essential than in 

 the cabbage patch. 



(2) In selecting a piece of ground on which to cultivate 

 members of the brassica tribe preference should always 

 be given to soil in which any of its representatives have 

 not been grown in the immediate past. 



(3) Adequate replenishment of the soil by the application 

 of seasoned farmyard manure in which well-rotted 

 straw finds a place. The manure should be employed 

 as an autumn dressing at the rate of two barrow loads 

 to six square yards of ground, and it should afterwards 

 be dug in and thoroughly mixed with the soil. 



(4) Seed-sowing in succession the principal months being 

 March and August, so that provision can be made to 



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