374 THE CABBAGE CROP. 



plants of marine origin, " common salt" may always be 

 applied with beneficial results. 



When all the necessary preparations have been made on 

 the farm, the operation of removing the plants from their 

 seed-bed to the field takes place, and this should receive 

 more care and attention than usually are bestowed upon 

 it. In lifting the plants it is most important that their 

 rootlets should be preserved free from injury, and that the 

 particles of soil attached to them by small, hair-like fila- 

 ments the true mouths or feeding organs of the plant 

 should be disturbed as little as possible, as not one of these 

 minute parts can be destroyed without a pro tanto diminu- 

 tion of feeding-power in the young plant, and the more 

 this is diminished the more the plant will have to do to 

 replace, them, before it can exercise its full powers of as- 

 similation in the new soil in which it has been placed. 



A close-tined steel fork is better for the purpose of 

 lifting them from the seed-bed than a spade; and if this 

 be forced in beneath the plants at a depth of a few inches 

 say 4 to 6 in a horizontal direction, the slice removed 

 by it will readily separate and fall to pieces by a slight 

 movement of the wrist of the labourer, and the plants 

 may be picked out from the disintegrated soil with but 

 comparatively little injury to their finest rootlets. If the 

 weather be very dry at the time, which frequently is the 

 case with the later transplantings, it is a good plan to 

 have a suitable vessel at hand, containing a compost in a 

 thick liquid form, and to dip the roots of each plant into it 

 as they are taken up. The compost speedily dries up on 

 their surface, and the natural moisture of the roots is thus 

 preserved, until they are again protected by being duly 

 planted in the field. Common garden soil mould, mixed 

 with the drainings of a dung-heap, or even with water, 

 provided the composition be tenacious enough to adhere 

 to the roots, will answer the purpose intended ; it should 



