RUT A BAG A CULTURE 



ploughs the ground back again, so that the top of the new ploughed 

 ridge stands over the place where the channel, or gutter, or deep 

 furrow, was, before he began. As soon as he has finished the 

 first ridge, the planters plant it, while he is ploughing the second : 

 and so on throughout the field. That this is not a very tedious 

 process the reader needs only to be told, that, in 1816, I had 

 fifty -two acres of Ruta Baga planted in this way ; and I think I 

 had more than fifty thousand bushels. A smart hand will plant 

 half an acre a day, with a girl or a boy to drop the plants for him. 

 I had a man, who planted an acre a day many a time. But, 

 supposing that a quarter of an acre is a day s work, what are four 

 days work, when put in competition with the value of an acre of 

 this invaluable root ? And what farmer is there, who has common 

 industry, who would grudge to bend his own back eight or twelve 

 days, for the sake of keeping all his stock through the Spring 

 months, when dry food is loathsome to them, and when grass is 

 by nature denied ? 



78. Observing well what has been said about earth perfectly 

 fresh, and never forgetting this, let us now talk about the act of 

 planting ; the mere mechanical operation of putting the plant into 

 the ground. We have a setting-stick which should be the top of a 

 spade-handle cut off, about ten inches below the eye. It must 

 be pointed smoothly ; and, if it be shod with thin iron, that is to 

 say, covered with an iron sheath, it will work more smoothly, and 

 do its business the better. At any rate the point should be nicely 

 smoothed, and so should the whole of the tool. The planting 

 is performed like that of cabbage-plants ; but, as I have met with 

 very few persons, out of the market gardens, and gentlemen s 

 gardens in England, who knew how to plant a cabbage-plant, so 

 I am led to suppose, that very few, comparatively speaking, know 

 how to plant a turnip-plant. 



79. You constantly hear people say, that they wait for a shower, 

 in order to put out their cabbage-plants. Never was there an 

 error more general or more complete in all its parts. Instead of 

 rainy weather being the best time, it is the very worst time, for 

 this business of transplantation, whether of cabbages or of any 

 thing else, from a lettuce-plant to an apple-tree. I have proved 

 the fact, in scores upon scores of instances. The first time that 

 I had any experience of the matter was in the planting out of a 

 plot of cabbages in my garden at Wilmington in Delaware. I 

 planted in dry weather, and, as I had always done, in such cases, I 

 watered the plants heavily ; but, being called away for some pur 

 pose, I left one row unwatered, and it happened, that it so con 

 tinued without my observing it till the next day. The sun had so 

 completely scorched it by the next night, that when I repeated my 

 watering of the rest, I left it, as being unworthy of my care, in 

 tending to plant some other thing in the ground occupied by this 

 dead row. But, in a few days, I saw, that it was not dead. It 

 grew soon afterwards ; and, in the end, the cabbages of my dead 



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