CALE (sea). 



81 



which it is finally planted about two feet each way. There are 

 two sorts, one a bright green, and the leaf very much curled, and 

 the other of a reddish brown colour, and not curled at all. The 

 green is generally thought the best ; but as the green savoy will 

 stand the weather, if sowed rather later in the year than mentioned 

 under the head of Cabbage, full as well as the Cale will, there 

 reall^ seems to be very little reason for troubling one's self with 

 this very coarse vegetable ; for it is ridiculous to seek a variety in 

 getting bad things to take their turn with good. 



133. CALE (SEA). — This is a p'ant which is a native of the 

 sea-beach : it is, in fact, sea-cabbage. It has a bloom not much 

 unlike that of the cabbage, a seed also, only larger : the leaf 

 strongly resembles the cabbage-leaf; but this is a perennial, 

 whereas all the cabbage kinds are biennials. This plant soon 

 gets to have a large stem or stool, like the asparagus, out of which 

 the shoots come every spring. These stools are covered over 

 pretty deep with sand or coal-ashes, or some such thing, and 

 sometimes with straw or leaves ; and the shoots, coming up under 

 the ashes or sand or earth, are bleached, until they come to the 

 air, and these shoots are cut off and are applied for table use, just 

 after the manner of the asparagus ; and though, in point of good- 

 ness, they are not to be put in comparison with the asparagus, they 

 come a month earlier in the spring, and for that reason they are 

 cultivated. They are propagated by seed, and also by offsets. 

 The mode of sowing and of planting may be precisely the same in 

 all respects as those directed for the asparagus, except that you 

 may begin to cat the ca^e for eating the second year. You cut 

 down the stalks in the fall of the year just in the same manner as 

 you cut down those of the asparagus ; and the treatment all 

 through may be just the same, except that there may be a greater 

 depth of ashes or of sand over the cale than of earth or manure 

 over the asparagus. While you can have asparagus in a hot-bed, 

 it can hardly be worth while to have the cale in that way ; but 

 if you chose to do it, you might, and the method is the same, 

 except that the covering in the bed must be deeper for the cale 

 than for the asparagus. Gardeners sometimes, after having co- 

 vered the crowns well over with sand or ashes, or some othe'' 

 thing, cover the point of each crown with a large fiower-pot, which 

 keeping the sun and air from the shoots, these are bleached even 

 after they come up above the ashes or the sand. This appears to 



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