RUT A BAG A CULTURE 



35. That all these precautions of selecting the plants and trans 

 planting them are necessary, I know by experience. I, on one 

 occasion, had sown all my own seed, and the plants had been 

 carried off by the fly, of which I shall have to speak presently. 

 I sent to a person who had raised some seed, which I afterwards 

 found to have come from turnips, left promiscuously to go to 

 seed in a part of a field where they had been sown. The conse 

 quence was, that a good third part of my crop had no bulbs : but 

 consisted of a sort of rape, all leaves, and stalks growing very 

 high. While even the rest of the crop bore no resemblance, 

 either in point of size or of quality, to turnips, in the same field, 

 from seed saved in a proper manner, though this latter was sown 

 at a later period. 



36. As to the preserving of the seed, it is an invariable rule 

 applicable to all seeds, that seed, kept in the pod to the very time 

 of sowing, will vegetate more quickly and more vigorously than 

 seed which has been some time threshed out. But, turnip seed 

 will do very well, if threshed out as soon as ripe, and kept in a dry 

 place, and not too much exposed to the air. A bag, hung up in a 

 dry room, is the depository that I use. But, before being threshed 

 out, the seed should be quite ripe, and, if cut off, or pulled up, 

 which latter is the best way, before the pods are quite dead, the 

 whole should be suffered to lie in the sun till the pods are perfectly 

 dead, in order that the seed may imbibe its full nourishment, 

 and come to complete perfection ; otherwise the seed will wither, 

 much of it will not grow at all, and that which does grow will 

 produce plants inferior to those proceeding from well-ripened 

 seed. 



Time of Sowing. 



37. Our time of sowing in England is from the first to the 

 twentieth of June, though some persons sow in May, which is still 

 better. This was one of the matters of the most deep interest 

 with me, when I came to Hyde Park. I could not begin before 

 the month of June ; for I had no ground ready. But, then, I 

 began with great care, on the second of June, sowing, in small 

 plots, once every week, till the 3Oth of July, In every case the seed 

 took well and the plants grew well ; but, having looked at the 

 growth of the plots first sown, and calculated upon the probable 

 advancement of them, I fixed upon the 2.6th of June for the sowing 

 of my principal crop. 



38. I was particularly anxious to know, whether this country 

 were cursed with the Turnip Fly, which is so destructive in 

 England. It is a little insect about the size of a bed flea, and 

 jumps away from all approaches exactly like that insect. It 

 abounds sometimes, in quantities, so great as to eat up all the 

 young plants, on hundreds and thousands of acres, in a single 



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