CABBAGE FOR STOCK - FEEDING. Brassica oleracea, Linn. Cruciferce. Figs. 315-317.
Cabbage is a name at present applied to a large group of plants. The wild cabbage (Brassica olera cea, var. sylvestris) is looked on as the prototype of these species. It occurs wild in Europe, on the coast of England. It has a crooked, half-ligneous, branching stalk, is perennial and bears seed when two, three or four years old. The stalks may be three to four inches in diameter and may bear green, herbaceous, cylindrical branches. Looking at this plant and at kohlrabi (Brassica caulorapa) it is easy to see that the latter is not distantly removed from the cabbage. Some of the wild plants hear small heads at the summit of the stem, and from the crop in the United States is grown in the North; although early cabbages for spring consumption are grown in large quantities, in the winter, in the southern states, as also the collard, a headless type.
De Candolle (Trans. Hort. Soc. London, Vol. 5, 1-43 ; Prodr. 1.213) grouped the descendants of the wild cabbage under six heads : Brassica oleracca acephala, the kales, thousand headed cabbage, etc.
Brassica oleracea capitata, the headed cabbage or common cabbage.
Brassica oleracea bullata, the Savoy cabbage. Brassica caulorapa, kohlrabi.
Brassica oleracca gemmifera, the Brussels sprouts.
Brassica oleracca botrytis, the cauliflower and broccoli.
The first four groups are grown for stock-feed ing as well as for human consumption. The last two are grown exclusively for table use.
Cabbages have been cultivated from time imme morial for human food. The Greek writers do not mention the head cabbage, but Columella and Pliny do, although it is believed that they referred to some soft-headed form. The hard headed form was in use in England in the four teenth century, and is mentioned as a New England product in the poem attributed to Gov ernor Bradford, written in 1656.
Com posit ion.
The average composition usually given for cab bages is water 90.5 per cent and dry matter 9.5 per cent. In twenty-two analyses of five varieties made at Cornell University during 1904-1906, the average dry matter content varied between 5.74 and 8.42 per cent, an average considerably below that usually given. The content of protein is high, the 9.5 per cent of dry matter being made up of ash 1.4 per cent, protein 2.4 per cent, crude fiber 1.5 per cent, nitrogen-free extract 3.9 per cent, ether
extract 0.4 per cent.
Propagation and cultivation.
The plant may be grown successfully on any soil that is in good condition. It is a gross feeder, and care must be taken to supply it with an abun dant but not excessive supply of moisture and to keep the land well stirred. Rich, heavy loams are to be preferred for the production of heavy yields for cattle-feeding. Deep fall-plowing is advisable, and the land should be loose, friable and moist ; an application of ten to twenty tons of manure per acre may be made in the fall before plowing, and this may be supplemented by fertilizers, and, if the land has not been limed recently, by an application at the rate of 1,000 pounds of quicklime per acre, to be applied in the spring and harrowed in. Manure, lime and fertilizers should be uniformly applied. Frequently, fertilizers are applied at the rate of 400 to 800 pounds of acid phosphate (16 per cent available) or its equivalent, i. e., 60 to 130 pounds of phosphoric acid ; 100 to 150 pounds of mnriate of potash ; fifty pounds of nitrate of soda per acre, in spring and harrowed in ; and about 150 pounds of nitrate of soda per acre, applied to the plants when they are growing, in three applications of about fifty pounds each at intervals of ten days, beginning as soon as they are about four inches tall. This pushes them through the critical period when their leaf surface is small and when a single green worm is able to eat a plant in a day.
The seed is sometimes treated by dipping it in a solution of formalin of the strength of 1 to 240 in order to destroy the spores of black-rot. It is then dried and sown. The seeds may be sown in abed and transplanted with a transplanting machine ; or they may be sown where the plants are to stand. Both methods are successful. In the latter case, one to one and a half pounds of seed is required per acre ; in the former, less seed is used, say one fourth to three-fourths pound. A drill, which will drop four or five seeds twenty-seven or thirty inches apart in rows is needed. In this case the plants will be thinned to one plant as soon as three inches tall. For New York, sowing early in May is advisable, although later sowing may give smaller heads which will keep better in storage ; but there will be a correspondingly diminished yield.