OOLLAEDS. 149 



COLLARDS. 

 By Charles Decknee. 

 The Georgia or Southern coUard for the past ten years 

 has taken a prominent place with the truck farmer so that 

 perhaps several hundred acres now are grown for the At- 

 lanta market. While it has been a leading vegetable in 

 the Southern home garden for a century or more yet up to 

 ten years ago it was not offered to the trade. It is said 

 that it originated from the regular cabbage and that col- 

 lards are nothing more than degenerated cabbage, as it 

 is evident that cabbage seed grovsTi in the South succes 

 sively will lose its heading propensity and become coUards. 

 But this may be as it will, the fact remains that the col- 

 lard is sought on our Southern table during winter to take 

 the place of cabbage and is preferred by a majority to that 

 of cabbage and being hardier to stand winter than the lat- 

 ter its cultivation is more desirable. To grow coUards 

 forty years ago the family vegetable garden was the only 

 place where it could be found and to-day hundreds of acres 

 are annually planted for the Atlanta market. The old 

 custom to sow the seeds in seed beds in March and trans- 

 plant as soon as large enough and so "summer" the plants 

 over has long been abandoned by our wide-awake truck 

 farmers and now the seed is sown in July and August 

 either in beds and transplanted or else it is drilled right 

 on the field which had been prepared and enriched as for 

 cabbage, and if the soil contains sufficient mioisture to 

 bring them up and give them a good start there will be no 

 further trouble. The land selected for coUards is land 



