1014 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The Spring Cabbage, however, is planted out in the autumn, and 

 makes little growth until the growing season sets in in the spring. It is 

 therefore not liable to suffer to any great extent from drought in its early 

 stages, its principal enemy, indeed, being the cold of the winter. Then 

 its active growth, when it does begin, takes place during the late spring 

 and early summer ; and here again, having already established itself, it is 

 much less likely to suffer from drought than the other kinds of Cabbages 

 that are planted out in the heat of summer. 



Another reason, to which we have already given expression, is that 

 dung when applied to autumn-planted Cabbages may possibly feed the 

 plant too much in its early stages. As has been already pointed out, all 

 that the crop has to do during the winter is to keep alive, and all that 

 is really needed, in order to give it a good chance of welfare, appears to 

 be to get it well established before the winter sets in. But it seems 

 desirable that the young plant should not be tco advanced in its growth 

 before the winter. 



Should the winter chance to be mild and open, doubtless early 

 forwardness of growth may prove to be an advantage in bringing on 

 early maturity ; but if the winter happens to be long or .hard, an early 

 advance in growth may be a positive disadvantage, rendering the plant 

 less able to stand the perils of frost. Plants that are killed or crippled 

 by frost during the winter have to be replaced by successors transplanted 

 from a reserve seed-bed, which is necessarily crowded ; and they will 

 necessarily be poor, stunted plants as compared with those that had 

 become properly rooted in the open space of the field. Moreover, it takes 

 such plants some time to recover from the processes of unseasonable 

 transplantation in the spring instead of in the autumn. 



It will probably, therefore, be found best to apply no dung at all for 

 Spring Cabbages, but to plant them out after the removal of some other 

 crop that has been dunged ; giving a liberal dressing of superphosphate 

 or basic slag or bone meal, and 4 cwt. of kainit or 1 cwt. of sulphate of 

 potash per acre, these fertilisers being well mixed into the soil during 

 preparation for planting. Nitrate of soda may then be applied, at the 

 rate of 4 cwt. or more per acre, during the spring, either all at once or in 

 two top dressings, according to the nature of the soil and season. 



Red Cabbages. 



A simple experiment was made in 1902 to see whether the effect 

 of nitrate of soda upon the red pickling Cabbage would resemble that 

 observed in the case of other varieties. 



A bed of Red Cabbages was planted, manured with a light dressing of 

 London dung, together with 6 cwt. of superphosphate and 1 cwt. of 

 sulphate of potash per acre. One half of this bed was dressed with 

 4 cwt. of nitrate of soda per acre, the other half being left without nitrate. 

 Each plot, of course, contained the same number of plants. The yields 

 of Cabbages on the two halves respectively were as follows : — 



