had been small, but his was
too large for this, so he took advantage of Nature's watering. When the
plants were about two inches above ground they were thinned out to stand
two feet apart in the furrow.
Cabbage, you know, is quite likely to become infested by pests. Perhaps
the most common of which are lice or aphis and the cabbage worm, a green
caterpillar. Therefore it is well to try a little prevention. So all
over the ground about the plants sprinkle unslaked lime. Tobacco dust or
soot may be used for this purpose, too. Good cultivation also helps
prevent these pests.
One row of cabbage began to develop worms. These George picked off, but
he found that he could not keep up with them; so The Chief advised him
to buy a little pyrethrum powder at the store. This he mixed with five
times its bulk of dust. Putting the mixture into an old potato sack he
shook it over the infested heads of cabbage.
Except for this drawback the cabbage did well. He lost the infested row
of cabbage. For he pulled them all up, spaded the ground over, and
sprinkled it with the poison mixture. All the other cabbage heads were
sprinkled with it, too. One may easily lose all his cabbage from these
worms.
In the fall the cabbages were harvested. This was about the last of
October. George pulled them up by the roots. He found some of the heads
rather soft, some bursting open. As it does not pay to keep such cabbage
over, these were fed to the cattle--a gift, George called it, to pay for
the fertilizer.
All the fine solid heads are worth storing. In order to get nice white
inner leaves, as the head begins to form break and bend over the outer
leaves and those that protect the inner ones. It is a sort of blanching
or bleaching process. Two hundred fine firm heads were the result of the
work of this boy.
"What are you going to do with all these, I'd like to know?" asked Jack.
"I expect to store a number of them--one hundred and fifty, I should
say. I'm going to give away fifty. In the winter I hope to sell about
one hundred of my stored ones."
George's way of storing cabbages is a good one. A spot was ploughed in
the orchard between the rows of trees. Then the cabbages were piled in a
neat pile roots up, one cabbage fitting into the other. All about and
over this heap a layer of straw about four inches thick was placed. To
hold the pile in place stakes were driven in about its base. To hold the
straw, branches were placed over the wh
|