ROOT CROPS. 329 



is left much later than this, there is danger that it will be broken 

 off at the crown and that a subsequent growth will ensue, re- 

 quiring the operation to be repeated. The distance at which the 

 plants should be left in the rows should not be less than six 

 inches, and probably even more than this would give a larger 

 crop. During the whole of the months of June and July, the 

 carrot field should be very closely attended to, and should be kept 

 thoroughly clean, as during all this time the growth of the plant 

 is slow, and the effect upon it of the growth of weeds is almost 

 disastrous. After this it will require less work, but at no time 

 should it be allowed to become absolutely weedy. 



Carrots must be harvested before any severe freezing of the 

 ground takes place, and the roots should be immediately protected 

 against the action of even a slight frost, as any freezing, after 

 they are taken up, greatly increases their tendency to decay. 

 Properly harvested and well secured for the winter, however, 

 they keep perfectly well until spring. The yield of the crop will, 

 of course, depend very much on the character of the land, and 

 the care with which it has been cultivated. Probably no one 

 thing, however, affects the result so much as the perfection of the 

 thinning. In Rhode Island, where large quantities of carrots are 

 grown as a "stolen crop" between onions, and where the seed 

 is merely dropped between the rows of onions, sometimes a dozen 

 in a place, no thinning ever being done, two or three hundred 

 bushels is considered a large crop. In 1819, my father raised a 

 crop on very stony and naturally poor land, in Westchester 

 County, New York, thinning the plants to intervals of from six to 

 eight inches in the rows ; and received from' the Westchester 

 County Agricultural Society, in 1820, the silver cup awarded for 

 the largest crop of carrots, on proof of a yield of over one thou- 

 sand bushels to the acre. In the description of the manner in 

 which the crop was raised, published in the Memoirs of the 

 Board of Agriculture of the State of New York, 1823, there 

 appears no evidence of any especially favorable circumstances 

 beyond the perfect natural drainage of the ground. The land 

 was stony, would produce only thirty bushels of corn to the acre 



