1871.] THE ROTATION OF CROPS. 497 



space — while others, and notably the Cabbage family, may sometimes monopolise 

 three-quarters of the whole. 



Farmers who farm under a lease, are, as a rule, bound down to adhere to an im- 

 posed rotation, but we do not find that the rule is imposed for the farmer's 

 benefit, to make him grow better crops than he otherwise would ; but, under the 

 half -tillage that the great bulk of land receives, the rule is necessaiy in the interest 

 of the landowner. We hear of many enterprising men who farm their own pro- 

 perty, who take many crops of corn off the same land in successive years without 

 injury, but then the tillage is thorough. We do not hear that the large market- 

 gardeners around our great cities are restricted in any way with regard to their 

 mode of cropping the land, and yet the land in their occupation might in many 

 instances be called garden-farms. It emphatically would not pay the market-gar- 

 dener to starve his land. Kotation of crops is the hungry mode of farming : it is 

 like working the horse to within an inch of his life, just giving him enough to eat, 

 and no more, to keep him up to a certain amount of work. Kitchen-garden land, 

 to produce good, crisp, and tender vegetables, must be fit, by deep cultivation and 

 plenty of manure, to bear any crop, and if it is not in that condition, no rotation 

 that we can propose can make up the difi"erence. — [This is the road to success. — Ed.] 



The crop of the largest spring-sown Onions we ever saw, and for samples of 

 which the grower lately received honours in London, was grown on land which 

 has borne the Onion crop for 20 years. We have known a patch of ground 

 which also bore Onions for 20 years, which was annually manured with the 

 clearings of a large pigeon-house. We have grown Potatoes on the same land for 

 many years running without any diminution of the crop, and no doubt many thou- 

 sands of cottage-gardeners could say the same. AVe have also known even Brussels 

 Sprouts on the same ground for many years running. So far as the necessities of 

 a crop are concerned, the same vegetable might be grown on the same land for any 

 number of years with deep cultivation and manure. 



But while we think that a change of position is not materially necessary to such 

 transient crops as Peas, Cauliflowers, or Onions, still it could be shown to be 

 necessary to crops of a more permanent nature. For instance, a quarter which has 

 been under Strawberries or Asparagus for years ; it would be bad management to 

 trench, manure, and plant again with the same unless unavoidable — and yet we 

 have seen even this done. Having said thus much, we hope we shall not be 

 thought to favour no rotation of crops at all for the kitchen-garden, or that we 

 adopt a haphazard system of cropping. AVe believe in and practise a rotation 

 of crops for various reasons. One reason is, that the land gets more thoroughly 

 cultivated, and with greater certainty ; another reason is, that certain crops follow 

 certain other crops more conveniently from the management the soil has received. 

 Another reason is, and not a small one, that there is system in it. It simplifies 

 labour, and men anticipate their work ; their interest gets fixed in the matter as 

 well as the masters'. We once lived in a very large ducal garden in the far north, 

 where it was the duty of the kitchen -garden foreman to make out a fresh plan of 

 the garden every year, with the crops for the various quarters mapped down to 

 succeed those of the previous year, according to a given system of rotation. We 

 dismiss the proposition that a previous crop may rob the soil of the constituents 

 necessary to the wellbeing of the succeeding one, as not to be entertained in kit- 

 chen-gardening. If a crop of Cabbage impoverish the soil too much to be followed 

 by another crop of the same, that soil is also too poor for Peas, Cauliflower, or 

 Spinage. Vegetables, to be worth the name, must be, we repeat, crisp and succu- 

 lent : 60 per cent of their weight will be water, not tough and woody, as if seed was 

 the object for which they were grown, and the stems of the winter Greens suited for 



