KOHLEABI 



LEGUMES 



391 



should be thinned by chopping to eight or ten inches 

 in the row. After the plants are well established 

 and weeds are destroyed, it is necessary only to 

 cultivate shallow at intervals of a fortnight or so 

 for the purpose of stirring the surface and keeping 

 the land in good tilth. 



Harvesting and storing. 



Kohlrabi is usually allowed to remain in the 

 field until frost, as light frosts do not injure it and 

 during the latter part of summer and early fall it 

 .grows some and ripens. Sometimes, however, it is 

 pastured in the field by swine or sheep. The fact 

 that it stands out of the ground gives it an advan- 

 tage for this purpose. If pulled, however, for im- 

 mediate feeding, the leaves should be left on, as 

 these are nutritious and palatable and add two to 

 five tons per acre to the yield. If it is to be stored, 

 the leaves should be removed, and the roots also if 

 ithey cannot be freed from dirt. 



Kohlrabi may be stored either in a cellar or a 

 (pit. The essentials of a good storage cellar are 

 drainage, ventilation and that it be frost-proof. 

 With these supplied, kohlrabi is not hard to keep. 

 If stored in a pit, the pit should be located on a 

 well-drained piece of ground. Two layers of straw 

 should alternate with layers of earth for covering. 

 Ventilation should be arranged at intervals in the 

 top of the pit. The pit should not be opened for 

 any length of time on warm days after the winter 

 has set in. 



Enemies. 



Kohlrabi is attacked by the same enemies as 

 cabbage, which see. 



Feeding. 



The product should be fed early in the season. 

 If left until late, it dries, becomes pithy, stringy 

 and sometimes hollow. For ordinary feeding, kohl- 

 rabi should be cut into pieces or slices ; for pigs 

 and poultry, however, it may be fed whole. It is 

 most economically fed with grain. Thirty to fifty 

 pounds make one feed for a thousand-pound animal. 

 There is no record of its having given a flavor to 

 milk when fed to cows, but it should not be about 

 the milk-room at milking time. No trials are 

 reported of its having been fed to horses. 



Literature. 



From the kitchen-garden or horticultural point 

 of view, many of the gardening books may be con- 

 sulted. [For American forage-crop experiments, see 

 Cornell Bulletins Nos. 243, 244.] 



LEGUMES. (Figs. 586-592). 



The leguminous plants have lately come into 

 great agricultural prominence because of the power 

 that some, perhaps all, of them have of fixing the 

 free atmospheric nitrogen contained in the soil, and 

 thereby enriching the land in this valuable element 

 when they decay, to the great advantage of plants 

 that do not possess this power. These are plants 

 of the great natural family, Leguminosse, which 



contains several thousand species in all parts of the 

 world, some of them being great trees, as mahog- 

 any, locust, Kentucky coffee-tree. Some of them 

 bear very gaudy flowers, pla- 

 cing them among the most 

 showy of all plants, as, for ex- 

 ample, the royal poinciana of 

 the tropics. The essential 

 botanical characteristic 

 that distinguishes the 

 Leguminosse from other 

 plants lies in the struc- 

 ture of the fruit. It is the 

 kind of fruit known to 

 botanists as a "legume," 

 being a simple pistil 

 ripening into a dry pod 

 that opens on both su- 

 tures and bears a row 

 of seeds on the ventral 

 side. The bean (Fig. 

 586) is a typical exam- 

 ple. The most typical 

 of the Leguminosss 

 have a papilio- 

 naceous or but- 

 terfly-likeflower, 

 as in the peas 

 and beans, the 

 corolla having 

 an upper mostly 

 broad andascend- 

 ing part called 

 a standard, two side-pieces called wings, and two 

 other petals below, united into a keel (Fig. 587). 

 The stamens are usually ten, and in the greater 

 part of the common species these form a tube about 

 the pistil, one of them, however, being free. The 

 Mimosa or acacia sub-family has regular (not papil- 

 ionaceous) flowers and few or many stamens, but 

 it agrees with the other members of the family in 

 the legume. The leaves of practically all legumes 

 are compound; but in some of the acacias they are 

 reduced, on mature plants, to phyllodia (expanded 

 petioles). 



The field crops belonging to the Leguminosse 

 may be found in this 

 Cyclopedia under the arti- 

 cles alfalfa, beans, beg- 

 garweed, berseem, clover, 

 cowpea, forage, lespedeza, 

 lupine, medic, melilotus, 

 pea, peanut, sainfoin, ser- 

 radella, soybean, spurry, 

 velvet bean, vetch. Other 

 leguminous plants are 

 mentioned in the arti- 

 cles on cover-crops, dyes 

 and medicinal plants ; 

 also on meadows and 

 pastures. Many species 

 are grown in greenhouses and open gardens 

 for ornament. The most popular is the sweet- 

 pea. The everlasting flowering pea is an old 

 favorite. 



Fig. 587. A papilionaceous 

 flower (sweet-pea), s, 

 standard j w, w, wings ; 

 ky keel. 



