eads will be found to be more or less decayed; do
not strip such leaves off, but with a sharp knife cut clean off the
decayed edges. The earlier the variety the sooner it needs to be
marketed, for, as a rule, cabbages push their shoots in the spring in
the order of their earliness. If they have not been sufficiently
protected from the cold, the stumps will often rot off close to the
head, and sometimes the rot will include the part of the stump that
enters the head. If the watery-looking portion can be cut clean out, the
head is salable; otherwise it will be apt to have an unpleasant flavor
when cooked. As a rule, cabbages for marketing should be trimmed into as
compact a form as possible; the heads should be cut off close to the
stump, leaving two or three spare leaves to protect them. They may be
brought out of the piece in bushel baskets, and be piled on the wagon as
high as a hay stack, being kept in place by a stout canvas sheet tied
closely down. In the markets of Boston, in the fall of the year, they
are usually sold at a price agreed upon by the hundred head; this will
vary not only with the size and quality of the cabbage, but with the
season, the crop, and the quality in market on that particular day.
Within a few years I have known the range of price for the Stone Mason
or Fottler cabbage, equal in size and quality, to be from $3 to $17 per
hundred; for the Marblehead Mammoth from $6 to $25 per hundred. Cabbages
brought to market in the spring are usually sold by weight or by the
barrel, at from $1 to $4 per hundred pounds.

The earliest cabbages carried to market sometimes bring extraordinary
prices; and this has created a keen competition among market gardeners,
each striving to produce the earliest, a difference of a week in
marketing oftentimes making a difference of one half in the profits of
the crop. Capt. Wyman, who controlled the Early Wyman cabbage for
several years, sold some seasons thirty thousand heads if my memory
serves me, at pretty much his own price. As a rule, it is the very early
and the very late cabbages that sell most profitably. Should the market
for very late cabbages prove a poor one, the farmer is not compelled to
sell them, no matter at what sacrifice, as would be the case a month
earlier; he can pit them, and so keep them over to the early spring
market which is almost always a profitable one. In marketing in spring
it should be the aim to make sale before the crops of spring gree