CULTIVATION OF PLANTS. 157 



maining leaves may be fed to cattle, having been previously 

 separated from the root, but in such a manner as not to injure 

 its crown. They should not be harvested immediately after 

 long rains. The best, most economical, convenient and effec- 

 tual mode of preserving the beet, and indeed all other root crops, 

 is in cellars attached to barns, properly constructed and well 

 ventilated; and for this purpose every farmer when about to 

 construct a barn, should fix on a site where, with but little ad- 

 ditional expense, he may run off a suit of cellars. The most 

 general mode now adopted for their preservation, is the same 

 as described for the preservation of the turnip. It is, however, 

 both inconvenient and uncertain. 



BENJAMIN WEBB, Esq., of Wilmington, Delaware, says, 

 that for the last two years he has cultivated the Silician sugar- 

 beetyield about eight hundred bushels per acre the ruta- 

 baga rather more. Expense of raising the sugar-beet, the 

 mangold-wurtzel or ruta-baga, according to his experiments, 

 when compared with corn, as three to one. That is, one acre 

 of roots, properly cultivated, will cost as much as the culture 

 of three acres of corn. The advantage however, is altogether 

 on the side of the root crop the produce being ten-fold pro- 

 ducing nine hundred bushels of the ruta-baga to the acre; 

 whereas the same ground would not yield over eighty bushels 

 of corn to the acre. 



The same intelligent gentleman who is one of our most 

 careful and observing farmers considers the sugar-beet pre- 

 ferable to the ruta-baga for dairy cows; but that preference 

 cannot induce him and in this there is a strong example for 

 others to cultivate the beet to the exclusion of the turnip. 

 These two roots are planted, and of course cultivated at different 

 seasons, which divides the labour both in planting and dressing, 

 an object with the farmer in the summer season, when every 

 moment of time is of the greatest value. Mr. WEBB very 

 judiciously observes "My experiments warrant no conclusion 

 like making the sugar-beet or any of the root family an entire 

 substitute for grain in feeding stock." He recommends roots 

 as most important auxiliaries in the economy of food. To a 

 yoke of working oxen he gives one bushel roots per day, with 

 grass, hay or straw. His winter allowance for a dairy of 

 twenty cows is, from ten to fifteen bushels of roots, and from 

 one to three bushels of chopped corn or oats per day, with as 

 much hay and straw as they can eat. 



J. N., a successful farmer residing in Delaware county, and 



who has been in the habit for many years past of fattening 



mutton for the Philadelphia market, has used, since 1837, the 



sugar-beet mainly, with a small portion of corn. The animals 



14 



