1QQ BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



per annum, and that by spade culture. The best method I have 

 found as yet, is to spread and dig in a good coat of fresh stable 

 manure in the fall ; dig the ground again in the spring, ei^ihteen 

 inches deep, rake fine, sow about 1st of June, (^lay with you,) keep 

 clean ; thin early, to six inches apart in the row, the rows fifteen 

 inches apart. Crop, three hundred and twenty bushels on quarter 

 acre. I have no doubt carrots can be successfully cultivated as a 

 fichl crop by plowing in deep, in the fall, a good coat of fresh stable 

 niiinure. I have not practiced it, from having too many other 

 things to do. I usually have a piece of couch grass to kill, or some- 

 thing of that kind to do, in places where the plow cannot safely be 

 used, and I find the spade and a crop of carrots very efiective for 

 the purpose. As for the use and value of roots, rutabagas will 

 make fat beef, good milk, and Avill keep store hogs in good condition, 

 and is valuable for feeding rals, unless your cellar is rat proof. 

 For hogs, chop up, 'with a root cutter, half a bushel for each hog, 

 twice a day, (SufFolks will keep iiat on half a bushel a day.) Por 

 cows, one bushel a day, and for fatting oxen three to four bushels a 

 day each. Horses will thank you in a way perfectly understandable 

 for a small feed occasionally. Carrots are more valuable for any of 

 the above purposes. I should put the value of rutabagas for stock, 

 at ten cents per bushel, and of carrots, at twenty cents. Either of 

 them can be mised for less than that amount, and by their aid the 

 straw and coarse fodder of the farm can be made available as cattle 

 feed. More stock can be kept, more manure made, and more roots, 

 straw, grass, grain, kc, grown, ad infinitum." 



W. D. Dana, Perry. 



While <Iceming it a duty to urge increased attention to root 

 culture, from a conviction that it would result in notable benefit to 

 agriculture, it is deemed not less a duty to caution cultivators from 

 expecting too great results from a given amount of roots. Some of 

 the estimates above given are believed to be decidedly larger than 

 facts will warrant, so far as regards the actual amount of nutritive 

 matter which they contain. Where only a small quantity of any 

 one of the roots mentioned is fed out in connection with coarse, dry 

 fodder, the help which it afibrds in the process of digestion may be 

 fully equivalent, and perhaps even greater, than the good to be 

 derived from an equal weight of hay, and to this extent, and in this 

 connection, they may be said to be of equal value, but when used in 

 larger proportion we must depend for profit upon the actual nutri- 

 tive matter which they contain, and this it is highly desirable to 

 ascertain with precision and accuracy. It can only be done by 



