76 the amateur’s kitchen garden. 
case be a good plan to sow in the first week of February and 
the first week of March a pinch each of Watcher en, Purple 
Cape, Hammond’s White Cape, and Beck’s Early Dwarf, and 
carefully nurse them, so as to be enabled to put out strong 
plants at the earliest moment the weather will permit. It 
may be worthy of notice, too, that all the foregoing sorts are 
worth trying for supplies in May and June, by sowing them 
in autumn, and planting them out in cheap protectors, such 
as Boulton’s, or in ground vineries of wood or brick. In 
March they should be thinned to twenty inches apart ; the 
thinnings planted out, and those remaining left to flower in 
the frames. It would be necessary to give plenty of air, and 
to take the glass off entirely at the end of April. 
There yet remains the depth of winter to be provided for. 
It is important, therefore, to bear in mind that broccolis in 
flower may be kept a long time in perfect condition under 
cover during winter. If, therefore, in the latter days of 
December there is a good supply of nice heads of Walcheren, 
or any other good sort on the ground, take them up, with 
roots and all complete, and plant them close together in dry 
earth in a shed, or any other suitable place from which they 
can be obtained as wanted. The winter supply is a question 
of weather as regards outdoor cutting, and of prudence as 
regards cutting under cover. In a mild open winter there 
will be plenty of nice broccolis turning in during January and 
February, provided suitable sorts are on the ground to pro- 
duce them. 
Winter Culture demands a paragraph, because broccolis 
are considered tender things. It is customary in November 
to “ lay them down.” This process consists in heeling them 
over with their heads to the north without in any serious 
degree disturbing their roots. The practice may be needful 
in districts where the winters are usually more severe than in 
London, but on our cold wet clay in the valley of the Lea, 
five miles north of the metropolis, it is altogether unnecessary, 
for we grow broccolis largely, and never lay them down, and 
our losses in severe winters are really of no material con- 
sequence at all. Another practice preparatory to winter 
protection is to sprinkle the ground between the plants with 
salt, at the rate of ten or twelve bushels to the acre. This is 
done early in October, and is certainly not a waste of labour or 
of salt, for the result is a wholesale destruction of vermin, and a 
