EOOT CROPS. 101 



bage, and 3 or 4 bushels of potatoes tliat grew on one edge of the piece. I 

 called the crop equal to 100 bushels of carrots. The cost was less than ten 

 dollars. They were selling for twelve and a half dollars per ton. Forty bush- 

 els to the ton would give me thirty-one dollars for the crop, or twenty-one 

 dollars for the use of one-eighth of an acre of land. In the spring of 1863 

 (having had such good success the year previous) 1 tliought I would try an 

 acre for the profit of it. I measured off" an acre, including the piece that I 

 planted the year before. I spread and ploughed in forty horse-cart loads of 

 manure from my barn cellar full eight inches deep ; then spread on twenty- 

 four loads of the finest manure I had that had been previously worked over ; 

 harrowed the piece with a revolving tooth harrow, raked ofl" all the lumps and 

 pieces of turf, and made a very nice-looking piece of land. It was rather a 

 formidable job to rake and get ofi' all the lumps, &c., from so large a piece, 

 but I told the men the crop in the fall would pay the bill. Sowed the seed 

 the 12th of May in drills eighteen inches apart, which I found during the sea- 

 sou, in taking care of them, was altogether too near. I think twenty-two or 

 twenty-four inches for the rows is near enough. Sowed two pounds of seed 

 upon the piece. Notwithstanding my early sowing, the weeds and grass came 

 up first, and I was obliged to stop all other work to attend to the carrots, 

 which made the cultivation much more expensive. The plants being so small 

 the weeds and grass overshadowed them, owing to the manure I had spread 

 and harrowed in near the surface. After being hoed and the weeds got out, I 

 thought I never saw a nicer looking piece of carrots growing, and should have 

 had a large crop, but the dry weather came (ja in June and everything suffered 

 severely, my carrots as well as all my other roots. In July it began to rain, 

 and then the rain was too much for them, and the whole season was bad for 

 the root crop generally. The last of July the tops began to blast and grow 

 yellow, and my crop I thought was spoiled, as it afterwards proved to be. 



The fore part of September the tops revived ; the dead leaves had disappeared ; 

 the new leaves from the centre began to show a beautiful growth, but to no 

 purpose ; the bottoms never grew to any size. 



TIME OF HARVESTING. 



This should be done before the severe cold and frosty nights, in order to 

 save the greatest amount of tops, as they are very valuable for feeding to the 

 cows that are giving milk. I commenced with a plough and a pair of horses ; 

 ploughed round the piece, turning the furrow from the rows of carrots ; the 

 men Avould go along, pull up and pick the carrots as the plough turned them 

 out. This is a very cheap and expeditious way of hai vesting them. The 

 ploughing out of the carrots left my land in a beautiful condition to get in an 

 early crop of grain the next spring. From the acre I only gathered 120 bush- 

 els of carrots — and quite smnll they were, too — about 100 lieads of cabbage, one 

 cart load of pumpkins and squashes that grew near the edges, and about 5 

 bushels of potatoes around the piece ; they, too, failed in giving me a fair crop 

 for the amount of seed planted. So my carrot crop was a failure this year ; 

 and, as I have said before, I would not recommend the cultivation of them for 

 a market crop, but would cultivate only a small piece for one's own use. I 

 consider the carrot crop the most uncertain of the root kind ; ordinarily there 

 is no money made in growing them. 



EXPENSE OF GROWING CARROTS. 



I kept on hand an exact account of the time of each man, horse, and the 

 manure used. Charging twenty-five dollars, or about half the value of the 

 nianure, and I find it cost me SS9 06, which is ten or twelve dollars more 

 than usual, for they Avere more weedy than ever before. If my crop had been 

 an average crop, I should have received at least $195 for them, giving me 



