"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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