PLANTS OF THE BRASSICA GENUS. l6l 



Farmyard manure is an excellent fertilizer for 

 cabbage, but unless applied some time before the 

 planting of the crop it should be somewhat reduced 

 before being used. Many eastern growers compost 

 farmyard manure with night soil and muck, or cer- 

 tain forms of fish waste, and when sufficiently near 

 the sea they add kelp. Purely commercial fertilizers 

 will not give returns so satisfactory, in the entire 

 absence of farmyard manures, as when the latter is 

 present. When both are applied the manure is com- 

 monly plowed in and the commercial fertilizer placed 

 in and near the line of the row which is to receive the 

 seed. These fertilizers are thus made specially help- 

 ful to the plants while they are young and the barn- 

 yard manure is more helpful at a later period. Such 

 fertilizers as guano, superphosphate with much 

 nitrogen in it and hen manure are excellent for such 

 a use, and so are wood ashes. Cabbage feeds freely 

 upon the three essential elements in complete fer- 

 tilizers, but most freely on potash. 



In any case, if the soil is not rich where a crop 

 of cabbage is to be grown, it should be made so, since 

 an ample supply of fertility not only fortifies the 

 crop against such vicissitudes as unduly dry weather, 

 for instance, but it is also necessary in order to pro- 

 duce a profitable crop. 



Sozving. — It is, at least, questionable if it will 

 pay to grow cabbage for green food only, in locali- 

 ties where they cannot be easily and surely grown 

 by the method of sowing the seed in rows rather 

 than by that of transplanting. Of course it is dif- 

 ferent when the crop is grown mainly for the mar- 

 ket, the residue only being fed to live stock. 



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