Part 4 (1/2)
Mr. J. N. Whitner, in his work on ”Gardening in Florida,” recommends Early s...o...b..ll, Extra Early Paris, and Extra Early Dwarf Erfurt. The seed is sown in boxes in autumn and protected from beating rains, and if sown before the middle of October the plants are also protected from the direct sun during the middle of the day. The main crop is planted out before the first of November, and harvested the following spring. In the northern portion of the state the plants are sometimes injured by the cold in winter. The crop is not yet extensively grown in that state. In regard to suitable soil, Mr. Whitner says:
”In this state almost every truck farmer has some low rich spot of bottom, lake or river margin suitable for the production of the cauliflower. It must, however, be well drained land, and no matter how fertile it may _seem_ to be naturally, a liberal supply of manure will more certainly insure handsome flower heads.”
Mr. Frotzer, a New Orleans seedsman, says of the cauliflower:
”This is one of the finest vegetables grown, and succeeds well in the vicinity of New Orleans. Large quant.i.ties are raised on the sea-coast in the neighborhood of Barataria Bay. The two Italian varieties are of excellent quality, growing to large size, and are considered hardier than the German and French varieties. I have had specimens brought to my store, raised from seed obtained from me, weighing sixteen pounds. The ground for planting cauliflower should be very rich. They thrive best in rich, sandy soil, and require plenty of moisture during the formation of the head. The Italian varieties should be sown from April till July; the latter month and June is the best time to sow the Early Giant. During August, September and October, the Lenormand, Half Early Paris and Erfurt can be sown. The Half Early Paris is very popular, but the other varieties are just as good. For spring crop the Italian kinds do not answer, but the Early French and German varieties can be sown at the end of December and during January, in a bed protected from frost, and may be transplanted into the open ground during February and as late as March. If we have a favorable season, and not too dry, they will be very fine; but if the heat sets in soon, the flowers will not attain the same size as those obtained from seeds sown in fall, and which head during December and January.”
In the _Texas Farm and Ranch_, H. M. Stringfellow, of Hitchc.o.c.k, Galveston County, gives an account of his success with American grown (Puget Sound) seed of Henderson's s...o...b..ll cauliflower. He says:
”After two years careful trial, I have found this seed every way superior to the original imported stock, good as that was, for our hot climate. The plants are much more robust, make equally as compact but larger heads, and what is most remarkable, they mature here fully two weeks or more ahead of the imported seed. Nearly every plant will make a marketable head, and they always sell for fully double as much as cabbage.
”These American seeds begin to head about the first of November, and are nearly all gone by Christmas, which gives ample time to get the crop off in any part of Texas.
”The cauliflower is emphatically a fall vegetable and seems to require for its perfect development a gradually decreasing temperature. The seed should be sowed from the first to the fifteenth of July, in a frame.
Make the ground very rich, and if you use salt, which I consider almost an essential for this crop, turn it under deeply at the first plowing.
In fact, salt and potash had better be deeply worked into the soil always, as it will not do for either to come in contact with the roots of a newly set plant.
”Until recently I have always thought that it would injure a plant to set it in soil to which cottonseed meal had been lately applied. But experiments made in the last few weeks prove that it is not only not injurious, but that cabbage plants grow off with wonderful vigor when the meal was applied the day before the plants were set.
”It will pay to subsoil for cauliflower, in order to give them all the moisture possible, though they will stand a drouth in the fall equally as well as a cabbage.”
In this connection may be mentioned the following account of cauliflower growing at Durango, Mexico, sent to the _Gardener's Chronicle_ in 1853: The writer says: ”Of the culinary vegetables, none excel the cauliflower, which attains such a size that a single head measures 18 inches to 2 feet in diameter, and makes a donkey load. The gigantic cauliflower is not distinct from our European species, but is solely produced by a cultivation which necessity has dictated. Being one of the Northern vegetables that degenerate or bear no seed if not annually procured from Europe, it is propagated by cuttings. After the heads are gathered the stubs are allowed to throw out new shoots, which are again planted and have to grow two years, producing the second, the enormous heads.”
The following from Woodrow's ”Gardening in India,” (4th edition, Bombay, 1888), contains many interesting points of suggestive value for the extreme South:
”Cauliflower, being a delicate plant, always needs great care and attention in its cultivation, but much less care is necessary in this country than in Europe. The soil most suitable is a rich friable loam, such as occurs in the black soil of the Duccan, the alluvial tracts in the basin of the Ganges or Nerbudda. Thorough working of the soil is necessary, and in stations where the market price of cauliflower is usually over four annas per head, as is the case in many parts of Southern India, the crop is well worth extra care in the preparation of the soil. This process should be begun shortly after the rains, when the soil is easily plowed or dug. It should then be turned up roughly to a depth of a foot or fifteen inches. A month later the clods should be broken with the mallet or clod crusher, and the plow put through the ground a second time. When the soil has weathered a few weeks, the scarifier or cultivator should be run over it once monthly until May. At that time good decayed cow dung or poudrette should be spread one inch deep, and any close growing crop which is not valuable, such as _sunn_, _tag_, _chanamoo_, or _Crotolaria juncea_, should be sown to keep down weeds and encourage the formation of nitric acid in the soil, which has been proved to be effected to a greater extent under a crop than on bare soil. During dry weather in August the crop should be pulled up and the ground plowed or dug and the crop buried in the trenches to act as green manure, and the land prepared for irrigation.
The seed-bed should be prepared by thorough digging and mixing about an inch in depth of old manure; wood ashes and decayed sweepings having a quant.i.ty of goat or sheep dung in it is well suited for the seed-bed at this season. Cow dung is apt to have the larva of the dung beetle in it--a very large caterpillar which destroys young plants by eating through the stem under ground. The bed having been thoroughly watered, the seed may be sown broadcast or in lines, and covered with a quarter of an inch of fine, dry, sandy soil, and shaded from bright suns.h.i.+ne.
When the seedlings appear, gradually remove the shade. The most convenient form of bed is not more than four feet in width, the length being sufficient for the ground to be planted. One ounce of seed is sufficient for a bed fifty feet square, which will give sufficient plants for an acre if the seed is good. Sowing should be made once in ten days, from the middle of August till the end of September. If the garden has been neglected, or the district remarkable for the quant.i.ty of grubs that yearly come out in August, spread a considerable part of the garden with a thick coating of stable litter or dry leaves and burn it, prepare the seed bed in the middle of the burnt s.p.a.ce, and soak two pounds of saltpetre in water for one hundred square feet, and water the bed with it for at least two weeks before sowing the seed. When the seedlings have acquired about five leaves, and the ground to plant is ready, lift the young plants gently on a cloudy day, and plant them out two and one-half feet apart each way. If bright suns.h.i.+ne comes out, shade the newly moved plants with broad leaves, and water them daily with the watering pot for a few days, besides irrigating sufficiently to keep the soil moist. Afterwards, hoeing, picking grubs and replacing the losses from the seed-bed must be attended to.
The selection of sorts is a serious matter in cauliflower culture, because many sorts grow only to leaves in some climates, and great loss has been met with by some people in consequence of getting the wrong variety. The variety known to English seedsmen as Large Asiatic, has established itself in the Northern Provinces, where a good head of cauliflower is procurable in December for one-half anna. In Bombay the same would cost ten times that sum. The seed of this variety is remarkably cheap in the districts it bears seed in. From Shajehanpore I bought large quant.i.ties at Rs. 2 per pound, while the price of seed from England was Rs. 2 per ounce. This sort is perfectly reliable when properly cultivated, but it is considered inferior in flavor and delicacy to English sorts, and its season is very short. It appears to run to seed when January comes, at whatever time it may have been sown, while English varieties come into use from the beginning of December to the end of February according to the date of sowing.
Among European varieties, success will generally be met with by sowing Early London and Walcheren. The different Giant and Mammoth varieties advertised in seedsmen's catalogues should be grown as extras, and if one is found to suit the soil and climate of a particular station, it may be grown more extensively afterwards; my experience with those varieties has not been happy.”
THE PACIFIC COAST.
Fine early cauliflowers are grown in California under irrigation, and marketed as far east as Chicago. Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton include a large area adapted to cauliflower growing, and this favorable territory extends northward into Alaska. The cool, moist climate of the Upper Pacific coast resembles that of England, where cauliflowers are so extensively grown.
There are few good markets yet in this region, but the rapid growth of the cities which exist affords promise of a large future demand for this vegetable, which is likely to come into more general use as it becomes better known.
Professor E. R. Lake, of the Oregon experiment station, states that some parts of the Oregon coast are well adapted to the cauliflower, but that other interests and lack of transportation facilities have thus far prevented its cultivation for market, the bulk of the crop sold there coming from California. He adds that the Chinese in the vicinity of Portland cultivate this vegetable, but that their peculiar methods are not yet understood.
Some ten years ago experiments were begun by one of our seedsmen in raising cauliflower and cabbage seed on the alluvial tide lands on the sh.o.r.e of Puget Sound. These lands, after being diked and drained, proved to be remarkably well adapted to the growth of the cauliflower and its seed. Others have since engaged in growing these seeds in the same region, and the business is a.s.suming large proportions. An account of this enterprise may be found in the chapter on Seed.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Dr. Oemler is the author of an excellent work ent.i.tled ”Truck Farming in the South.” His farm is on Wilmington Island, in the mouth of the Savannah River.