578 



GLEANINGS m BEE CULTURE. 



July 



niiuiy new homes. Well, to my great sur- 

 prise the kohlrabi very soon got a footing. 

 It is true, that people did not know how 

 they were to be cooked— a good many of 

 tliem— and quite a number had never seen 

 or heard of such a thing ; but they had got 

 into a sort of way of thinking that whatever 

 we carried was good, if it were cooked right. 

 Ernest's wife thought she would try cooking 

 them as we do vegetable oysters, and they 

 declared them to be " just si)lendid." Young 

 married couples are a good deal inclined, you 

 know, to call everything "just splendid." 

 Other folks cooked them as they do turnips 

 or mashed potatoes, and they proved to be 

 " splendid " that way. Pretty soon the kohl- 

 rabi-bulbs were called for a good deal faster 

 than they grew, and we didn't have any 

 trouble with overgrown ones. People called 

 for them when they didn't know what the 

 name was. One individual, after trying in 

 vain to hit the name, said he guessed they 

 called them " Kohl Abrahams." I could not 

 think for quite a while where he got hold of 

 '' Abraham " until I remembered that Abra- 

 ham was one of the greatest of the patri- 

 archs, and a patriarch was often, in old Bible 

 times, addressed as " rabbi ; " or, at least, 

 their descendants were so called in Christ's 

 time. So our friend knew that it had some- 

 thing to do with patriarchs, and " kohl Abra- 

 ham " was as near as he could get. Anoth- 

 er customer wanted some " ^Ira^.s.'' Of 

 course, he got what he wanted. We sell 

 two bulbs for a nickel. What do you sup- 

 pose an acre of ground would amount to 

 with a good crop of kohlrabis sold at the 

 above price ? And, by the way, we can put 

 kohlrabi on the market without trying very 

 hard, before you 

 can get cabbage, 

 j green peas, tur- 

 nips, or any thing 

 of the sort. Raise 

 the plants indoors, 

 just exactly as you 

 do cabbage-plants. 

 Plant them out in 

 good rich ground ; 

 and before a cab- 

 bage would think 

 of making a good 

 head, these kohl- 

 rabis will have 

 macle beautiful 

 ))ulbs. As some of the friends may not be fa- 

 miliar with this member of the Cabbage fam^ 

 ily , we give a picture of it. They must be used 

 when they arc, say, Uie size of a goo 1 fair- 



K(jnr^i{ABi. 



sized apple ; for if allowed to grow very 

 large they get woody and stringy. 



S03IE'lIIIN(i AHOUT SAVING YOUR OWN 

 SEEDS. 



Now, a point comes in here that I want to 

 talk about a good deal ; in fact, I shall talk 

 about it all through this book. I told you 

 about marking the best heads of lettuce 

 '■'■ For Seed." You want to do the same 

 thing with kohlrabi, cabbage, and almost 

 every thing else. Do you want to know 

 why ? If yoii could go to our kohlrabi-patch 

 to-day you would notice that here and there 

 are plants that are not going to make kohl- 

 rabi at all. Some of them look as if they 

 hadn't quite decided what to do. One starts 

 to make a cabbage-head ; another has evi- 

 dently got a mistaken idea that it was 

 planted for a turnip, while a third is clear 

 off from the track and is trying to put up a 

 bunch of blossoms like cauliflower. What is 

 the trouble V Why, the seed has not been 

 carefully saved from choice specimens. The 

 type of the plant has not been fixed by care- 

 ful selection for many generations. You 

 may ?ay that I didn't purchase my seeds 

 from a reliable house. Well, I got the seed 

 from Peter Henderson or Landreth & Sons— 

 I am ashamed to say I can not now tell 

 which, and there is where I am to blame. 

 You should know just where you got the 

 seed for every thing you raise. Better still, 

 you should raise your own seed, if it is a pos- 

 sible thing. The tirst kohlrabi that made a 

 nice bulb should have hfid a stake put up 

 beside it, labeled, " For Seed." Right here 

 the interesting point comes in, that I do not 

 know how they get seed of kohlrabi. I am 

 going to find out, though. 



There is an excellent little book pub- 

 lished by Mr. Francis Brill, entitled," Farm- 

 Gardening and Seed-Growing." This tells 

 us all about how to raise seeds of almost 

 all our garden vegetables. Now, then, if I 

 had for several years raised my own seed 

 from none but choice bulbs, I myself could 

 have fixed the type of our good friend " Kohl 

 Abraham" (?) so that he would know just 

 exactly what [ wanted him to do when he 

 got to the proper age to make a cabbage- 

 head, a turnip, a cauliflower, or a kohlrabi. 

 Our best seedsmen aim to do this ; but, my 

 friends, with the best intentions in the world 

 it is next to impossible for all large seed- 

 houses to have every seed they send out 

 selected from none but such nice speci- 

 mens as you and I can produce in our own 

 gardens. It is the same with cabbages. WjB 

 aro now picking daily the prottiest little' 



