getable. But, as
yet, no plan has been discovered, under our burning July and August sun,
that will make cauliflower head with certainty every season. Any
practical man, with strong ground well manured, can every now and then
raise a crop of cauliflower. But this partial success one year does very
often prove a decided loss in the long run, for the reason that it often
happens three times the amount realized from this crop will be spent in
the attempt to raise another just like it, with the determination not to
give up. This has been my experience, although the experiments are made
now on a much smaller scale than formerly. Last year I set out 2,500
plants, and only marketed 500 from the patch; the failure was owing to
late planting. To avoid any such mistake this year, the ground was made
ready for planting early in July, and by the middle of the month some
1,800 plants set out. The ground in this case was richer and more mellow
at the time of planting than last year, and the cultivation was about
the same. At first these plants grew vigorously, but late in August they
were checked from some unknown cause, and from this check they did not
recover. Some of the lower leaves had turned yellow and dropped off,
leaving the stalks almost bare, while others have made no new growth
since. Judging from present appearances, there will not be twenty-five
sizeable heads out of the 1,800 planted. This is rather discouraging,
but one has to take the good with the bad in farming or gardening. Too
late to remedy the error it was found that the variety planted was
Walcheren instead of the Erfurt, a variety that has given me more
profitable returns for the last six years than any other, unless it may
be the Half Early Paris."

In New England the crop is more uncertain than on Long Island. W. H.
Bull, of Hampden County, Massachusetts, finds the crop profitable about
one year in three. Formerly, he says, when cauliflowers were a new
thing, any kind of a head would sell, but now only the best will bring a
paying price. The loose, leafy, purple, or otherwise discolored heads
produced in hot, dry weather, are hardly worth hauling to market. He
finds the Extra Early Erfurt about as good as Henderson's Snowball. He
sows the seed in April for a fall crop. If sown after the first week in
May the plants fail to head before frost.

Around Boston the cauliflower is grown quite successfully, and, as
elsewhere stated, seed is occasionally produced t