CABBAGE 



95 



yourself and the boy, the quickest way is to furrow it and put the 

 cabbage on the side of the furrow that is straight. With more 

 helpers, you can have one man to drop the plants and four men to 

 follow. If you are on a large acreage, none of these methods would 

 appeal to you — only a machine. This is all right if you have two men 

 on the low seats who know what they are doing. The rows might 

 be straight, but the plants not straight in the row. If labor is 

 very unskilled, I should advise leaving the machine in the barn and 

 coming out with the trowel or dibble. It is a question in some cases 

 where labor is plentiful if one could not do better and quicker work 

 by hand. Where this crop is the last in a rotation with other farm 

 crops, the machine is very handy. A machine in some cases will 

 plant three acres a day, sometimes as high as six, though sometimes 

 in planting half an acre you are doing well. 



There are great advantages in this machine over hand work. 

 In hand work, you generally draw down some of the top soil in trans- 

 planting. With the machine work, the machine pushes through the 

 soil and has a tendency to push the soil out and place the plant in 

 cool soil below, which is ju^t what the plants need for continued 

 growth. The machine will do the best work for that reason. It 

 brings the soil to where it is cool, places water around the roots of 

 the plant, presses the roots against the soil to give good contact, and 

 the actual growth of the seedling is continued at once. 



The average distance apart for these plants varies with indi- 

 viduals. In growing small varieties, I should place as close as fifteen 

 inches in the row and eighteen inches between rows. As we come 

 towards the later type, we have a larger cabbage. They need to be 

 placed further apart in the row and between rows. If you cultivate 

 by horse power and wish to cultivate the whole season, you must 

 give room. Never cultivate cabbage before nine o'clock in the 

 morning nor after four in the afternoon. Cabbage leaves are very 

 brittle. They are full of water before nine o'clock and they begin 

 to "stock up" in the afternoon. If you go through at those times, 

 you have a tendency to break those very easily. Cabbages are bent 

 more easily between these times, and may be pushed out of the way. 



In harvesting cabbage, the tendency is to have a knife in the 

 right hand and grasp the head with the left hand, putting the knife 

 as near the head as possible. The closer one gets the knife, the less 

 time it takes to cut it. If the cabbage is not collected right away, 

 turn it upside down. They can be collected by individual heads in 



