44 BEET. 



BEET. 



BETTERAVE. Beta mdgaris. 

 VARIETIES. 



Early Blood Turnip-rooted. 

 Early Long Blood. 

 Extra Dark Blood. 

 Yellow Turnip-rooted. 



Early Scarcity. 

 Mangel Wurtzel. 

 French Sugar, or Silesia. 

 Sir John Sinclair's. 



BEETS, in their several varieties, are biennial, and the best 

 blood-coloured are much cultivated for the sake of their 

 roots, which are excellent when cooked, and very suitable 

 for pickling after being boiled tender ; they also, when sliced, 

 make a beautiful garnish for the dish, and the young plants 

 are an excellent substitute for Spinach. 



The Mangel Wurtzel and Sugar Beets are cultivated for 

 cattle. Domestic animals eat the leaves and roots with great 

 avidity. They are excellent food for swine, and also for 

 milch cows ; and possess the quality of making them give a 

 large quantity of the best-flavoured milk. The roots are 

 equally fit for oxen and horses, after being cut up into small 

 pieces and mixed with cut straw, hay, or other dry feed.* 



A small bed of the earliest Turnip-rooted, and other es- 

 teemed kinds of Beets, may be planted in good rich early 

 ground the first week in April, which, being well attended 

 to, will produce good roots in June. 



Draw drills a foot apart, and from one to two inches deep ; 

 drop the seed along the drills one or two inches from each 



* An acre of good, rich, loamy soil has been known to yield two thou- 

 sand bushels of beet-roots, some of which weighed from fifteen to twenty 

 pounds each. To produce such enormously large roots, they should be 

 cultivated in drills from two to three feet apart, and the plants thinned to 

 ten or twelve Inches in the rows. It is generally conceded, however, that 

 moderate-sized roots contain more saccharine matter, in proportion to their 

 bulk, than extra large roots, and that twenty tons, or about seven hundred 

 bushels, are a very profitable crop for an acre of land, and would be amply 

 sufficient to feed ten cows for three or four months of the year. A gen- 

 tleman in Connecticut computes the products of one-fourth of an acre of 

 good land, at eight tons, which, he says, will support a cow the whole 

 year. He allows five tons to feed on for nine months, and the other three 

 tons to be sold, and the proceeds applied to the purchase of other food, to 

 be given from the time the roots fail in the spring, until new roots are 

 produced. 



