It took the boy longer than some of the others to do his work, for George did more work at home than the others. He was probably better informed on farm matters, however. His father was a real farmer; the other boys' fathers farmed, too, but not as a business.
Anticipating the amount of time this preparatory work would take he had not started his cabbage inside. To get an early crop of cabbage, seed must be planted in January or February; then one may start in March. But for the late crop plant in the open in May or June. This is just what George did.
He made furrows straight down his sunny southern slope. These furrows were two feet apart. The seed, of Savoy cabbage, was sprinkled in the furrows. This was done after rain. Cabbage needs much moisture for quick germination. George might have poured water into the furrows and puddled or stirred the earth a bit, if the garden 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."