CABBAGE. 39 



largely. This is not strange when we consider that 

 there is a great difference of opinion among growers 

 on this point, a difference that comes from the dif- 

 ferent methods of farming. One farmer will grow 

 7,000 heads to the acre, his neighbor will grow 

 1 1,000 of the same and get just as good, if not better 

 cabbage. This marked difference seems strange — 

 it is strange — but it is easily accounted for. In the 

 one case the plants are set sufficiently far apart for 

 the cultivator to do all the work required; in the 

 other case they are set so that the cultivator and hoe 

 both are used, in working the ground. More than 

 this, the number of heads that can be cut from an 

 acre depends largely upon the fertility of the soil. 

 It costs more to feed 10,000 than it does 5,000, no 

 matter what it is we feed, whether it be plant or 

 animal. 



Under a system of intensive farming, which 

 gives the plants all the food they can possibly assimi- 

 late, and permits no barren waste between the' rows, 

 and where all the cultivation is done by hand and 

 with a narrow hoe, the crop per acre will be more 

 than three times as large as where the land is worked 

 in the ordinary way. This may be seen by the way 

 the systematic trucker does his work. For example, 

 we will take the Early Jersey Wakefield variety ; this 

 is set in rows thirty inches apart and the plants one 

 foot apart in the row, which gives 17,424 to the 

 acre, and if the seed is a carefully selected strain, 

 such as the market gardener seeks to obtain, and the 

 plants are set under favorable conditions, there 

 should be sold from the acre 17,000 heads, which is 

 a much higher percentage than can be had when 

 grown by the ordinary method. 



