150 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



in other parts of the State that have quick, cheap transportation 

 to our cities and populous centres, can be profitably used in the 

 production of small fruits and vagetables ; and but little rota- 

 tion is allowable, except in some of the more distant sections, 

 where manure is costly or not easily obtained. In such sections 

 the crops more commonly produced are early potatoes, cabbage, 

 pease and turnips, and the soil should be a warm, sandy loam, 

 with a small per cent, of clay. Now these crops are enormous 

 feeders, and take from the land its mineral and nitrogenous 

 elements with great rapidity, and require large returns of the 

 best manure. A crop of twenty tons of cabbage would carry 

 off seven hundred pounds of soluble mineral matter and a 

 large portion of nitrogen. A crop of turnips of seven hundred 

 bushels would take off four hundred and ninety pounds of min- 

 eral matter. A crop of two hundred and fifty bushels of pota- 

 toes to the acre would consume five hundred and thirteen 

 pounds. This is a rapid drain of the land, and nature's forces 

 can do but little towards supplying the loss. Now wheat, with 

 a crop of twenty-five bushels per acre, carries away but twenty- 

 eight pounds of mineral food, and its needed nitrogen if the 

 straw is left ; and barley, with a crop of forty bushels, removes 

 but thirty-six pounds. Red clover, with a crop of two tons per 

 acre, carries off but fifty-seven pounds. And while the former 

 crops take up in their mineral matter an enormous per cent, of 

 potash, the leading special ingredient of the latter is lime and 

 the salts of lime. 



A rotation, by which these crops could be grown successfully 

 without a constant supply of barnyard manure, would be, first, 

 potatoes, a potash plant, treated with a mixture of wood-ashes 

 and plaster. Second, wheat, a lime plant, or Indian corn or 

 barley, which would take nearly the same ingredients as wheat. 

 Third, turnips, a potash plant, with yard manure. Fourth, 

 cabbage, treated with phosphate and sulphate of lime, and some 

 compound of nitrogen. Fifth, clover, the second crop of which 

 should be ploughed in, to prepare the land for the succeeding 

 potato crop. This change of crop will change the want in the 

 predominating element of plant-food, will make but one draft 

 on the barnyard, supply three vegetable market crops, and two 

 much needed crops for home consumption. 



Many a farmer in our eastern counties, with a majority of 



