ARTICHOKE, JERUSALEM
Though sometimes used as a vegetable and for pickling is especially valuable for feeding stock, especially swine which are allowed to harvest it by rooting it out of the ground. It is claimed that an acre of ground planted to artichoke will keep from twenty to thirty hogs from October to April. They have a special value as a means of clearing a piece of land of undesirable weed growths—like Canada Thistle, quack grass or locust sprouts, as the hogs in rooting for the tubers will destroy the weed roots, thus redeeming a piece of land that may be utilized for garden crops or fruit.
In planting the tubers are cut and planted the same as potatoes and cultivated in the same way until the crop is matured sufficiently to turn the hogs on it or they may be harvested to feed during winter to any stock which needs a succulent winter food.
BROCCOLI
A vegetable similar to cauliflower, but of somewhat coarser flavor. It is hardier than cauliflower and will do well in sections where cauliflower is not successfully grown. For rapid growth it should receive frequent cultivation and be grown in rich soil. Sow seed very early in greenhouse, hotbed or warm window and set out as soon as the ground can be prepared in spring, setting the plants the same distance apart as cabbage and drawing the earth up about the roots when hoeing. White Cap is about the best variety, making fine, large, compact heads of a creamy-white color, of good flavor.
BRUSSELS SPROUTS
These little miniature cabbages, growing closely together on a stalk, are delicious boiled like cabbage or used as a salad. The culture is the same as that accorded cabbage. The seed should be sown in the hotbed in spring and set out in the open ground in May in rows three feet apart and about twenty inches apart in the rows. Cultivate to keep down weeds and maintain a dust-mulch. By fall the little heads will be fully developed. The delicate flavor is improved by a touch of frost. For late use sow seed in June.
CHICORY