The cauliflower flourishes fairly well under similar cultivation to the cabbage, but being more delicate requires greater attention; differing from the latter, the heads are well formed, but it is necessary to shade them when coming to perfection, the clean, white growth being liable to be damaged by the too ardent sun.
Good cauliflowers command a ready sale at better prices than are to be had in London as a rule, the average cost being from twopence-halfpenny to fivepence per head.
Another very familiar crop is seen largely in Egypt—the leek. This is a profitable vegetable, which grows to a good size, is easily cultivated, and realises a total per acre of about fifteen pounds. The carrot, too, is largely grown—in two varieties, the native and the Greek. The native kind is sown in September, and is ready for lifting in January; while the Greek variety, sown in the same month, is also used for the production of a summer crop in February. A deep soil is necessary, while its sandy nature in Egypt is most suitable for this root, and when carefully cultivated a fair return may be expected.
One of the most extensively grown vegetables, a very general favourite almost everywhere except in England, is the garlic. It does well in Egypt, often in plots of as much as two acres, and has the advantages of not requiring great care in cultivation, nor much water; while an average crop will yield of the silvery bulbs enough to be valued at about fifteen pounds per acre.
The onion, again, proves itself to be a most thriving inhabitant of this Eastern country, growing hard, firm, clean-skinned, and healthy. In this sunny clime it is extensively grown, and not merely for home use. The kind most popular is the red Spanish onion, and it is cultivated both in Upper Egypt and Lower, there being this peculiarity of difference, namely, that the Spanish onion grows to a larger size in the south, while the flavour of those grown in the Delta is superior.
A few words will not be out of place respecting the cultivation of this vegetable in Upper Egypt, where it is grown most extensively as a farm crop for export. The seed is sown in the month of October, transplantation takes place in March, and, all going well, the crop is ready for lifting in June or July. After the transplanting no irrigation is required. The yield is approximately four to five tons per acre, and the market price two pounds per ton.
The next vegetable on our list when grown in quantity looks wonderfully familiar and home-like. It is the artichoke—not that of tuberous and sunflower-like growth, but the deeply cut, acanthus-like leaved ornamental plant of English gardens, with its majestic thistle-like purple head.
This is one of the best-paying garden crops, these heads being greatly in demand by Europeans, though not much sought after by the natives. In the culture it will be found that the growth is excellent for four years, when transplanting becomes necessary and should be resorted to.
Asparagus is decidedly one of the best-paying crops in Egypt, and naturally always in great demand by the Europeans who visit or pass through the country in ever-increasing numbers. The cultivation is the same good old-fashioned style practised in England, the beds being well prepared and generously treated with stimulants. All that is required to secure a fine crop is proper attention under skilled direction, for there are no drawbacks from frost, the grower never finding the sturdy greenish purple shoots of yesterday drooping over and destroyed by the morning’s frost.
Well treated, the beds will remain good for from ten to fifteen years, a very modest computation this, for if well-managed and not cut too hard, a good asparagus plantation ought to remain prosperous for twenty or thirty years. As the result of his generous treatment in the way of stimulants, the grower may expect to receive wholesale from two shillings to five shillings per hundred shoots, according to their size.