FALLOW CROPS. 39 



the one acre of ruta baga or beets gives 36,000, or 

 four times as much us three acres of grass-land. 



VI. SUBSTITUTION OP FALLOW CROPS FOR NAKED FAL- 

 LOWS. 



Fallowing is the mode of preparing land (general- 

 ly greensward) by ploughing it a considerable time 

 before it is finally ploughed for wheat and rye, to be 

 sown in autumn. A naked fallow is such as receives 

 no intermediate crop between the first ploughing and 

 seeding for the main crop ; a fallow crop is one that 

 intervenes between these two processes. In Eng- 

 land, fallows are generally broken up in autumn, re- 

 ceive repeated ploughings during the ensuing sum- 

 mer, and are sown in autumn, or cropped with turn- 

 ips, and sown the third year with barley. In the 

 United States, naked fallows are more often broken 

 up in June or July, receive repeated ploughings, and 

 are sown in September. For fallow crops, old 

 swards are broken up in autumn, and clover lays in 

 the spring ; the first receive one or more ploughings 

 in the spring, and, immediately after, the seeds which 

 are to constitute the fallow crop. Clover lays re- 

 ceive the fallow crop upon the first furrow, or with 

 but one ploughing. Naked fallows, in England, oc- 

 cupy the ground a year ; and if they are sown with 

 tares or rye, as they often are, to be fed off in the 

 spring, they are termed bastard fallows. With us, 

 fallow grounds lay idle but part of a season. 



There is no agricultural writer of note, and very- 

 few good farmers, who now contend for the propri- 

 ety of naked fallows, except on stiff clays or wet 

 grounds, which can only be worked in the summer, 

 and this for the single purpose of cleaning such soils 

 from root-weeds. We subjoin two or three quota- 

 tions in corroboration of this fact : 



" Fallowing was necessary as long as grains only, 

 all of which exhaust the soil, were cultivated ; du- 

 ring the intervals of tilling the fields, a variety of 



