Teachers' Leaflet. 



513 



LESSON LXXVIL 



VARIETIES OF TURNIPS. 



Purpose. — fo call the attention of the pupils to the kinds of turnips 

 in the market or grown in their own neighborhood. 



In general, two kinds of turnips are grown by the farmers in New York, the 

 flat turnip and the rutabaga, the latter called the Swedish turnip. It would be a 

 good plan to secure specimens of both and observe their likenesses and differences. 

 In shape the rutabaga is elongated and rigid with roots springing from all sides 

 of the tuber as well as from the long, pointed tap-root. The flat turnip is a flat- 

 tened sphere, smooth, and the fine rootlets are nearly all confined to the tap-root. 



Photo, by Verne Morton. 



The Rutabaga. A good provider. 



The rutabaga leaves are large, smooth, blue-green without hairs, thick and cabbage- 

 like. The flat turnip has leaves that are thinner, narrower, more deeply scalloped 

 and are green and hairy. In size the rutabaga may be from six inches to a foot in 

 length and often weighs several pounds. The flat turnip seldom grows large 

 enough to be an unwieldy handful. In quality the rutabaga is firmer, richer, 

 sweeter, though coarser-grained than the flat turnip, but it is late, requiring all 

 the season to grow, and is available only for fall and winter use; while the flat 

 turnip may be used in early summer and two crops are grown on the same ground. 

 Although the turnips will live in the ground all winter, and send up their leaves 

 and blossoms the next spring, yet those who grow turnip seed in this climate 

 take up the tubers and store them, carefully covered with earth or sand, so that 

 they will wither as little as possible and then replant them in the spring; more 

 and better seed is thus obtained. 



33 



