CABBAGE. 



79 



give you seed a twelvemonth sooner than you can have it by taking 

 the trouble to select and put out the stumps of the best cabbages, 

 and taking care of them during the ensuing winter. I have known 

 seed thus saved to degenerate so much as to give w^hole acres 

 with scarcely a plant that has not run off to seed in the spring, 

 instead of producing loaved heads ! Never save seed of any of 

 this tribe from plants that have run ; for it is pretty sure to 

 lead to rubbish and disappointment. Where it can be done con- 

 veniently, it is best to save a considerable quantity of cabbage- 

 seed at a time ; even some hundreds of stumps, as it is then less 

 liable to be spoiled by the blossoming of other plants of the cab- 

 bage kind. In general, in the south of England, these cabbages, 

 if properly treated, and of a right early sort, will have good white 

 loaves early in April, or, at latest, by the middle of April. These 

 are succeeded by others sowed early in the spring ; especially by 

 the sugar-loaf, which, if sowed in the spring, will produce fine 

 heads in the months of July, August, and September, and some 

 sow ed a little later will carry you through to the month of No- 

 vember. Early Yorks sowed in June will follow these. For win- 

 ter use there really needs nothing but the savoy, and the dwarf 

 green is the best of that kind. When true to its kind, it is very 

 much curled, and of a very deep green. It should be sowed about 

 the middle of April, pricked out in the manner before described, 

 but at larger distances, because it is a larger plant, and because it 

 ought to acquire a good size of stem before it goes out into the 

 ground, the time for final planting being in the hot month of July, 

 and the distances being more extensive than those of the smaller 

 cabbages. Some savoys, sowed about a month after the main 

 crop, and planted out six weeks later than the main crop, will 

 give you greens in the winter, far preferable to any cale. Early 

 cabbages also, sowed and put out about the same time, and 

 planted in rows very close to each other, afford greens all the 

 winter long. By November, the green savoys, first planted out, 

 will have large and close heads. The drum-heads, and other 

 large cabbages, are wholly unfit for a garden. The red cabbage 

 is raised and cultivated in the same manner as the early cabbages. 

 It is put out in the fall of the year : but it is large, and must have 

 the same distances as broccoli. They form their heads in the 

 early part of the summer, and are hard, and fit for pickling, to- 

 wards the end of it. There remains now to speak of the manner 



