Kale and kohlrabi

Usage examples of cabbages.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them, by James John Howard Gregory This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.

In New England the soil for cabbages should be ploughed as deep as the subsoil, and the larger drumheads should be planted only on the deepest soil.

The reason I prefer to use a portion of the cabbage food in the form of manure, is, that I have noticed that when the attempt is made to raise the larger drumhead varieties on fertilizers only, the cabbages, just as the heads are well formed, are apt to come nearly to a standstill.

While it is next to impossible to raise, in old gardens, a fair turnip, free from club-foot, cabbages may be raised year after year on the same soil with impunity, or, at least, with but trifling injury from that disease.

As a rule, it is the very early and the very late cabbages that sell most profitably.

New England, cabbages are not secure from injury from frost with less than a foot of earth thrown over the heads.

In keeping cabbages through the winter, three general facts should be borne in mind, viz.

Next pull up the cabbages, which, if they are of the largest varieties, may be expeditiously done by a potato hoe.

This latter is my own practice, with the addition of leaving a ridge of earth between every three or four rows, to act as a support and keep the cabbages from falling over.

If the soil is frozen to any depth before the cabbages are removed, the roots will be likely to be injured in the pulling, a matter of no consequence if the cabbages are intended for market, but of some importance if they are for seed raising.

When there is a large lot of such cabbages the most economical way to plant them will be in furrows made by the plough.

Most of the bedding used in covering them, if it be as coarse as it ought to be to admit as much air as possible while it should not mat down on the cabbages, will, with care in drying, be again available for covering another season, or remain suitable for bedding purposes.

In the year 1888, I grew eighty-five different varieties and strains of cabbages and cauliflowers.

Savoy surpasses all other cabbages in tenderness, and in a rich, marrow-like flavor.

Many of the cabbages sold in the market as Savoy are really this variety.