CABBAGES AND CAULIFLOWERS. 



35 



this truth than in the choice of cauliflower seed. 

 Few garden crops, if any, will yield so great 

 returns as the cauliflower when the maximum of 

 success is attained ; but even the most suitable 

 •soil, the most skillful cultivation and the most 

 favorable weather, cannot accomplish this if a 

 careful choice of seeds be neglected. As you sow^ 

 you will reap. The cauliflower, especially the 

 most costly and valuable varieties of the early 

 dwarf Erfurt type, is of all garden plants one of the 

 most liable to deviate and deteriorate, unless never- 

 ceasing, scrupulous care be exercised in select- 

 ing plants for stock seed. Even the originally 

 best stock will soon " run out " if the requisite 

 skill and care in the growing of the seed be not 

 continually observed. 



Considering how many plants may be grown 

 from an ounce of good cauliflower seed (about 

 three thousand), and that the average quality of 

 these plants will be in a fixed relation to their 

 pedigree — to their original type being kept strictly 

 up and even improved through generations, 

 under most favorable circumstances, or, on the 

 other hand, by neglect allowed to deteriorate — it 

 will be evident, on a moment's thought, that the 

 best obtainable seed, not only of strong vitality, 

 but of the purest and best stock, is absolutely the 

 cheapest. Just calculate what even but one or 

 two cents more or less per head amounts to for the 

 plants grown from an ounce, or five or ten ounces, 

 of seed ! But the difference between the very best 



