GENERAL CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT. 



629 



slit from the top downwards will also effect the same object, but it disfi- 

 gures the top of the stem. The hearting or heading, and consequently the 

 blanching of all the kinds^, will be promoted by loosely tying up the leaves, 

 as soon as the plants show an indication of hearting, with strands of mat- 

 ting ; and this may be usefully practised with the earliest spring cabbages, 

 and with the borecoles when it is wished to have the leaves blanched. To 

 increase the size of the flower-heads of cauliflower and broccoli, as soon as 

 the flow^er appears, break down, or twist, the footstalks of all the large 

 leaves, in order to throw more of the organizable matter into the flower. 

 Most of the varieties, but more especially the broccolis, are subject to the 

 club in the root ; an unnatural protuberance produced b}'^ the puncture of an 

 insect, and the subsequent hatching of deposited eggs, and apparently pro- 

 ducing a diseased habit, so that club roots are produced afterwards in the 

 same plant without the intervention of an insect. When the club has once 

 appeared on the roots of a plant, there is no remedy for it ; but in soils and 

 situations subject to this disease, the insect may be deterred from laying its 

 eggs in the root by putting a little quicklime in the hole made by the 

 dibber, before inserting the plant. Incorporating burnt clay with the soil 

 has also been found to check clubbing, as well as to annoy worms and slugs ; 

 but the quantity necessary for these purposes, unless it was also required for 

 the improvement of the soil (l74), amounts almost to a prohibition of their 

 use. As the leaves, more especially of the common cabbage ui very dry 

 weather, are subject to be covered by aphides, and to be eaten by the larva? or 

 caterpillars of butterflies (Pontia sp.), as soon as the former or the eggs of 

 the latter are observed, the plants should be liberally watered with clear 

 lime-water, and the operation repeated till every egg and caterpillar is 

 destroyed. Even copious supplies of clear water, poured on the plants for 

 several evenings in succession, will eff'ectually destroy the caterpillar in every 

 stage of its growth ; and in no variety of the cabbage tribe, excepting the 

 cauliflower when it is nearly mature, will water in the slightest degree 

 injure the flavour. Where lime-water or water alone cannot be supplied in 

 sufficient quantities, the eggs of the butterflies ought to be collected and 

 destroyed ; and indeed this may be done in connexion with watering. The 

 eggs are deposited in small patches on the upper side of the leaf ; and in 

 very warm w^eather they will hatch in twenty or thirty hours, and soon 

 spread over the whole surface of the leaf. Slugs and earth-worms may be 

 eff^ectually destroyed by lime-water ; or as a convenient substitute, where 

 quicklime is not at hand, potash and water, or a decoction of foxglove, 

 henbane, white hellebore, or walnut leaves. In general, the routine culture 

 of the cabbage tribe consists in destroying weeds as soon as they appear, 

 stirring the soil as deep as the roots will admit with a fork, or a pronged 

 hoe, and supplying w^ater or liquid manure when the condition of the plants, 

 or the soil, or the state of the weather, requires it. Where the stems are 

 left to produce sprouts, deeply stirring the soil and manuring are of essential 

 service. In gathering the crop, when sprouts are not wanted, the plants, 

 after the head is cut off, should be pulled up by the roots and carried to the 

 manure-heap ; or, if the stems are to be left, thf^y should be stripped of 

 their leaves, and the whole of these removed to the dung-heap and mixed 

 with other materials ; for nothing among vegetables is more off'ensive than 

 the decaying leaves of the cabbage tribe, and indeed of the Cruciferae gene- 

 rally. Coleworts are genei-ally gathered by pulling them up by the root, 



