204 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Mat 



a good crop. He spread his manure broad cast, 

 and plowed it in, to the depth of eight inches. 

 He put ashes in the hill sometimes, and found them 

 beneficial. Guano put in the hill, had caused his 

 potatoes to rot. His potatoes cost about sixteen 

 cents per bushel, which was less than the expense 

 of raising a bushel of carrots. 



Mr. Brown stated the result of feeding round 

 turnips to a cow for fattening, to which he fed thir- 

 ty bushels, with hay, and made her very fat indeed, 

 so that she was sought by the butchers at a high 

 price. In preparing the land for turnips, he pul- 

 verized it well, and levelled with brush harrow.— 

 The seed was sowed in drills marked out with a 

 machine prepared by himself. The labor of sowing 

 in that way was very little, and they were weeded 

 principally with a wheel hoe. He had recently seen 

 a plan of a cultivator which weeded both sides of a 

 row at once, but he had not seen it tried. 



Mr. J. L. LoVERiN-G, of Vermont, Avas next in- 

 troduced, who said that though root crops were per- 

 haps less cultivated in Vermont than in Mass., there 

 were few farmers who do not raise more or less. 

 They raise many sheep, and it is becoming an ax- 

 iom that no farmer can have a good flock of merino 

 sheep who does not feed them with roots as often 

 as twice in a week. The green food seems to pre- 

 vent some of the diseases to which they are subject 

 when not thus fed. Ruta-bagas are raised principal- 

 ly for feeding stock. He had not succeeded well with 

 getting his carrots to germinate, as for some cause 

 or other the seed failed ; but when they came up 

 well he had no difficulty in obtaining a large croj). 

 He had raised at the rate of twelve hundred bush- 

 els to the acre, and he thought them better than 

 ruta-bagas. Potatoes are still fed to stock a good 

 deal in Vermont. Many are raised, and if they 



getting into mischief by getting among the beets, 

 and they will eat off all the leaves, which are as 

 good as green corn for them, and the eating of 

 them off does not injure the crop at all. He 

 thought the leaves more than paid for the labor of 

 raising those which were near the hog-pen. 



He thought Mr. Bown had slandered potatoes. 

 They are decidedly better for milk cows than car- 

 rots. For hogs he always boiled them. A little 

 meal, say a quart to a half a bushel of potatoes, he 

 admitted, would do a great deal of good, if fed reg- 

 ularly. He thought turnips injured milk. Carrots 

 he had found to be good for horses when they were 

 not worked; they will fatten well upon them. 

 At the present time, when corn is woth $1,25 a 

 bushel and hay more than a cent a pound, he was 

 willing to pay thirty-three cents a bushel for pota- 

 toes to feed to his stock. 



Mr. Bkown said if he had slandered the "mur- 

 phies," of which he was not aware, he would "ac- 

 knowledge the corn," if Mr. Towne would state his 

 method of cultivating sugar beets. 



Mr. Towne replied that he prepared the ground 

 for them precisely as Mr. Broavn did for the man- 

 jel-wurzel. He took pains to put but a single seed 

 in a place, dropping them in little holes made by a 

 stick, about five inches apart. He was quite par- 

 ticular about sowing them because it would save 

 the labor of thinning them out. He put them in 

 about two inches deep and covered with a hoe. The 

 rows Avere about two feet apart. He did not soak 

 the seed before sowing. 



Mr. Howard, of Boston, thought the idea that 

 turnips make poor milk was carried too far. He 

 knew a farmer who fed his cows on Swedish tur- 

 nips and chopped hay, and his customers complained 

 when the turnips were omitted. He knew anoth- 



will not bring in market about twenty-five cents a er man who has kept seventy head of cattle and 

 bushel they are considered worth that to feed out. fed several thousand bushels of turnips, and made 

 Some farmers cook ruta-bagas before feeding, and excellent butter. At the exhibition of the New 

 one gentleman had recently fattened a pair of old York State Agricultural Society, he received the 



cattle with ruta-bagas cooked, and made them very 

 fat. He thought ruta-bagas worth twice as much 

 when cooked as when fed raw. Turnips are fed to 

 sheep, and are thought to be better for them than 

 carrots or other roots, producing a better quality of 

 milk for the lambs. 



Gen. Towne, of Worcester county, had a very 

 hiwh opinion of the importance of roots for feeding 

 stock ; the sugar beet, for beef and for stock gen- 

 erally, was decidedly the best root that grows, in 

 his opinion. One great advantage in raising them 

 is th\t the tops are very good indeed for young 

 hogs. He said he always meant to have some pigs 

 about the first of September, so that about the first 

 of October the milk of the mother would hardly be 



highest premium for butter, his cows having been 

 fed wholly on Swedish turnips and hay. The 

 comparative value of different vegetables is impor- 

 tant ; but he beHeved the potatoes to be far supe- 

 rior to any other root for feeding to cattle. One 

 winter he fed two cows one week with potatoes, the 

 next on parsnips, and the next on sugar beets, giv- 

 ing them also constantly two quarts of meal per 

 day. They were fed in this way through the winter, 

 and the result was that the cows did best in those 

 weeks when fed on potatoes, and poorest when fed 

 on sugar beets. He thought the Massachusetts 

 Board of Agriculture could not do a better thing 

 than to direct attention to experiments as to the 

 relative value of different kinds of root crops as feed 



sufficient for them. Then he had a yard of sugar ; for cattle. 



beets near, and he would make a little hole in the | Mr. WiLLUMS, of Hadley, spoke of the difficulty 



fence so that the pigs might understand they were in raising roots on the Connecticut river valley, for 



