RUT A BAG A CULTURE 



fairly up, we went with a very small hoe, and took all but one in 

 each ten or eleven or twelve inches, and thus left them singly 

 placed. This is a great point ; for they begin to rob one another 

 at a very early age, and, if left two or three weeks to rob each other, 

 before they are set out singly, the crop will be diminished one- 

 half. To set the plants out in this way was a very easy and 

 quickly -performed business ; but, it is a business to be left to 

 no one but a careful man. Boys can never safely be trusted with 

 the deciding, at discretion, whether you shall have a large crop or 

 a small one. 



59. But now, something else began to appear as well as turnip- 

 plants ; for, all the long grass and weeds having dropped their 

 seeds the summer before, and, probably, for many summers, 

 they now came forth to demand their share of that nourishment, 

 produced by the fermentation, the dews, and particularly the sun r 

 which shines on all alike. I never saw a fiftieth part so many 

 weeds in my life upon a like space of ground. Their little seed 

 leaves, of various hues, formed a perfect mat on the ground. 

 And now it was, that my wide ridges, which had appeared to my 

 neighbours to be so very singular and so unnecessary, were 

 absolutely necessary. First we went with a hoe, and hoed the 

 tops of the ridges, about six inches wide. There were all the 

 plants, then, clear and clean at once, with an expense of about 

 half a day s work to an acre. Then we came, in our Botley 

 fashion, with a single horse-plough, took a furrow from the side 

 of one ridge going up the field, a furrow from the other ridge 

 coming down, then another furrow from the same side of the first 

 ridge going up, and another from the same side of the other 

 ridge coming down. In the taking away of the last two furrows, 

 we went within three inches of the turnip-plants. Thus there 

 was a ridge over the original gutter. Then we turned these 

 furrows back again to the turnips. And, having gone, in this 

 manner, over the whole piece, there it was with not a weed alive 

 in it. All killed by the sun, and the field as clean and as fine as 

 any garden that ever was seen. 



60. Those who know the effect of tillage between growing plants, 

 and especially if the earth be moved deep (and, indeed, what 

 American does not know what such effect is, seeing that, without 

 it, there would be no Indian Corn ?) ; those that reflect on this 

 effect, may guess at the effect on my Ruta Baga plants, which soon 

 gave me, by their appearance, a decided proof, that TULL S 

 principles are always true, in whatever soil or climate applied. 



6.1 . It was now a very beautiful thing to see a regular, unbroken 

 line of fine, fresh-looking plants upon the tops of those wide 

 ridges, which had been thought to be so very whimsical and un 

 necessary. But, why have the ridges so very wide? This 

 question was not new to me, who had to answer it a thousand 

 times in England. It is because you cannot plough deep and 

 clean in a narrower space than four feet ; and, it is the deep and 



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