234 
ON THE CULTIYATION OF EARLY CAULIFLOWEES. 
addition to the quantity that will suffice, should be shifted, but the overplus may be 
permitted to take their chance in the pots they are already in ; but they must not be other- 
wise neglected, as they are sure to fall in useful in early spring for stopping up gaps in the 
secondary ranks. In shifting, it is almost needless to observe that the more robust portion 
of the stock must be selected, the pots as large as can be afforded, the quantity of drainage 
increased, and the compost employed should be a rich and rather unctuous loam, well 
incorporated and enriched with thoroughly decomposed manure, commingled with soot and 
wood-ashes. The Cauliflower is a gross feeder, and flakes of not too rotten dung with a 
layer of soot, the latter to obviate the ingress of worms, it will be well to introduce 
immediately over the drainage. 
The compost should not of course be sifted, but used in as rough and porous a 
condition as is convenient or deemed essential to the maintaining of porosity in the mass ; 
they should be potted with tolerable firmness, the " balls " of course unbroken, and after- 
wards watered with tvcmn water, to settle the soil about the roots. 
Re-plunge them in a similar slight bottom- warmth to that which they were previously 
removed from, sufficiently near to the glass to prevent etiolation, when from severe frost 
or the unpropitious state of the weather the glasses are necessitated to continue on in the 
day-time, but, at the same time, room enough must now be allowed them for progressive 
vigour. Continue to accord them a free circulation of air, by full exposure when the 
weather will admit of the nocturnal as well as the diurnal atmosphere ; renew the anti- 
slug allurements, freely water them with tepid liquid-manure, and increase the latter both 
in quantity and quality as the plants gain strength ; dredge over now and then as recom- 
mended above, loosen the surface soil of the pots with a pointed stick, and never allow it 
to become encrusted ; do not permit them to become dry at all, and although light rains 
upon them will make a wonderful improvement, they must not be allowed to become over 
saturated with moisture. Treated thus, the plants will be strong and the pots full of 
roots by the first week in February, when they may be planted out. No better situation 
in the open quarters can perhaps be allotted for the hand-glass culture they are now about 
to enter upon, than where the earliest crop of celery has been cleared, inasmuch as 
the heavy manuring preparation made for that luxuriant vegetable, in conjunction with 
the manure dispensed in the liquiform to the crop in a growing state, will have rendered 
the ground rich, and from the thorough pulverisation the ground has undergone by exposure 
to frost, &c. in taking up the celery crop, a quarter cleared of the latter would be, to employ 
the expression of a culturist, " in fine heart " for Cauliflowers. 
To improve the " staple " of the ground, however, as the taking up of the celery crop 
proceeds, the ground should be " bastard- trenched," and the surface disposed " ridge and 
furrow " fashion (superficially speaking), and on dry frosty mornings, so as to thoroughly 
expose the under soil to the action of frost ; and to pulverise the whole, it must be frequently 
well forked over, " tossed and tumbled " in an uneven manner, until the time of planting, 
when, to render the ground more fit for the reception of the plants, it should be top-dressed 
with a few barrowfuls of fresh soil, very rotten dung and wood-ashes, lightly forked in and 
levelled down with the potato fork. 
Hand-glasses with moveable " caps " are decidedly better than those entire, being so 
much stronger as well as superior for aeration. All being ready for planting, dispose the 
glasses as is usually done, in as many parallel lines across the garden (or " quarter " of ditto), 
from north to south, as will answer the requirements of the case, in lines five or six feet 
asunder, and the glasses individually three or four feet apart (the distances, however, must 
respectively depend on whether it is intended to have intervening crops or not), and when 
they are placed, the interior of them may be prepared (for early Cauliflowers will not 
succeed well without preparation) by the introduction of a shovelful of dry soil mixed with 
wood-ashes, lime or char-dust from the soil store-shed ; this must be forked in with a 
small hand-prong, and a plant inserted rather deeply in each angle, thus leaving the 
centre free. 
If the weather is not frosty, sprinkle the plants with water in a tepid state, which will 
refresh as well as cleanse them of soil, &c.; they must be kept quite close for a week or 
