116 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



single acre. It may be asked, " Had they been grown 

 in the usual manner, half that distance apart— namely, 

 thirty inches — why would not the produce have been 

 raised to forty-eight tons, and so doubled ?" Mr. Smith 

 replies, '•' For this plain reason : To grow fine crops 

 of mangold and turnips in the ordinary method, it is 

 considered by many indispensable to thin them out 

 from twelve inches at the lowest to fourteen inches 

 or more from plant to plant. And even this, at 

 thirty inches from row to row, it will be found, 

 on close inspection — so greefly are the rootlets of 

 the mangold, so zealous in their office of feeders to 

 fatten the bulb— that, in their search for food, thay 

 covtr the narroio two feet six-inch intervals, as 

 tvith a networlt of spider's ^vebs, while the gross 

 leaves shut out the healthy action of the atmosphere ; 

 and both these circumstances together prevent the 

 plant from attaining the fullest development of which 

 it is capable. Let the narrow-leaved carrot, however, 

 which feeds principally from the points of its long tap- 

 root, and little from its almost invisible lateral fila- 

 ments, take the place of every alternate row of 

 mangold, and the mangold roots are almost wholly un- 

 obstructed, and to the carrot therefore the preceding 

 remarks are inapplicable." Accordingly, a crop of 

 carrots is taken between the mangold rows; and -thus 

 from the same acre of land is obtained this quantity of 

 roots : Ked mangold, 24 tons ; carrots, IG tons — total 

 produce, 40 tons. In single rows five feet apart, the 

 general average of swedes was 20 tons, ranging one 

 season as high as 27 tons per acre. Drum-head cab- 

 bages, in rows five feet apart and two feet six inches 

 from plant to plant, give a noble crop, with its leaves 

 generally meeting and occasionally intermingling 

 across the five-feet intervals, the plants in many cases 

 measuring six feet in diameter, a great portion of them 

 weighing 30 lbs., very many 40 lbs. and upwards, and 

 one of them 48 lbs. Counting the number of plants, 

 and striking the average as near as may be, this 

 cabbage crop amounts to about 33 tons per acre. 

 We are not now Insisting upon the best methods of 



growing these crops, nor do we mean to maintain that 

 sixty inches is the best distance to sow swedes. The point 

 we are enforcing is, that great crops can be raised with 

 very wide drilling, provided the cultivation is of the 

 right kind j and this being once recognized as an in- 

 disputable truth, the farmer will soon find where and 

 under what circumstances he may adopt the practice 

 with advantage. 



Of course, the above Lois-AVeedou crops were grown 

 by deep tillage and high manuring. For the cabbages, 

 the ground was trenclied, and a heavy dressing of farm- 

 yard manure buried at the depth of sixteen or eighteen 

 inches, and the surface sprinkled with ashes of weeds 

 and burnt clay, and forked in. For the mangolds, the 

 land was tilled before winter, farm-yard manure 

 trenched-in a like depth, with a stirred crumbly 

 bottom of three or four inches more, and a compost of 

 two bushels of lime to one of salt, with fine mould ad 

 libitum, was stirred lightly in with the fork just before 

 the seed was put in, Mr. Smith buiies the manure at 

 the great depth mentioned, by going one turn with a 

 plough, and then trench-ploughing the same furrow 

 with another turn, leaving a broad bottom fourteen or 

 sixteen inches deep. Then the subsoil plough follows, 

 going seven or eight inches deep, making the whole 

 depth broken up nineteen or twenty inches. Common 

 subsoiling on tenacious clay has but little effect, and 

 that little soon ceases — the soil quickly coming to- 

 gether again, and closing up as if the iron had never 

 touched it. But in this case the furrows, "opened," 

 as we call it, are left open, and the subsoil exposed ; 

 and after the frosts have crumbled it, the scarifier 

 stirs all together, as a preparation for receiving the 

 manure. 



The success of wheat both on light and heavy land, 

 grown on the stripe system, at an average width of 

 twenty inches between row and row, we need not again 

 allude to; only repeating that on Mr. Smith's heavy 

 land the twelfth successive crop, without manuring of 

 any kind during that time, produced last year six 

 quarters per acre with a great yield of straw. 



THE AGRICULTURE OF NORTH WALES. 



The " district" of the Royal Agricultural Society's 

 Chester Meeting comprises more of interest and diverse 

 peculiarities than any other which has been yet 

 visited. It is a county that can teach us better than 

 any other about grazing and dairying — it is, in fact, 

 the true cheesc-shire — and in Staffordshire and Salop 

 we find examples of first-class arable farming, 

 though the population is too much engaged with 

 pottery, coal, and iron works and manufactures to be 

 specially agricultural. In the western portion of the 

 district, including the six counties of North Wales, exists 

 a husbandry needing enlightenment and reformation, 

 and the infusion of new ideas, which are likely to flow 

 from the coming exhibition. 



The city of Chester is well situated for receiving the 



visits of an inquiring rural population, and for spread- 

 ing among them the new facts and notions resulting from 

 the Show, besides being convenient and close at hand 

 for thousands of curious sight-seers from the centres of 

 mechanical industry. Within about a thirty-mile radius 

 are — Birkenhead and Liverpool, Southport, Ormskirk, 

 Chorley, Wigan, Bolton-le>Moor, Salford and Manches- 

 ter, Stockport, JIacclesfield, Tarporley, Congleton, 

 Newcastle-under-Lyne, Hanley and Stoke-upon-Trent, 

 Market Drayton, Wem, Wrexham, Oswestry, Llanfyllin, 

 Llangollen, Corwen, Bala, Ruthin, Denbigh, Abergele, 

 Rhyl, Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, Holywell, Flint, and Mold. 

 What a crowd of images, of factories, docks, collieries, 

 lead mines, iron works, potteries, salt mines, dairies, 

 Welsh flannels, rise before us at the mention of these 



