8G0 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Pakt 111. 



potato camps, and lightly covered with straw, or preserved for some time under a shed. 

 On these occasions, before storing up, the shaws or leaves and the tap-roots must be cut 

 off and removed, to prevent heating and rotting. The heaps must not be covered with 

 earth-like potatoes, for in this case their complete destruction is inevitable. This root 

 contains too much water to be preserved for any length of time in a fresh and palatable 

 state, after being removed from the ground ; and though the loss in seasons unusually 

 severe, particularly in the white globe variety, is commonly very great, it is probable that a 

 regular system of storing the whole, or the greater part, of the crop eveiy season would, 

 upon an average of years, be attended with still greater loss ; besides the labour and 

 expense, where turnips are cultivated extensively, would be intolerable. {Supp. ^c) 



5421. Taking up and replacing is a mode by which turnips have been preserved, by Blaikie of Holk- 

 ham, and some others. The mode is to cart the turnips from the field where they grow, to a piece of 

 ground near the farm-offices, before the winter rains set in, when, the tap-root being cut off, the plants 

 are set on the surface of the ground, in an upright position, as close to each other as they can stand, where 

 they keep much better than in a store during the whole season. The advantages of having them quite 

 close to the homestead, in place of bringing them most probably from a distant part of the farm in wet or 

 stormy weather, are so obvious, as fully to justify a recommendation of the practice. 



5422. Replacing and earthing have also been tried with succes.s, especially with the Swedish turnip. 

 Being pulled and freed from their roots and leaves, they are carted to a piece of well worked dry soil near 

 the farmery, and there deposited in rows, so close as nearly to touch each other in the bottom of shallow 

 furrows, the plough covering one row as another furrow is opened. In this way many tons are quickly 

 earthed in, and on a very small space, and they can be turned out when wanted with equal facility. 

 {Partner's Magazine, vol. xxiii. p. 282.) 



5423. The produce of turnips cultivated in the broad-cast manner in England varies 

 from five to fifteen 4;ons per acre : the latter is reckoned a very heavy crop. In Northum- 

 berland and Berwickshire, a good crop of white globe turnips drilled usually weighs from 

 twenty-five to thirty tons per acre, the yellow and Swedish commonly a few tons less. Of 

 late there have been instances of much heavier crops, and in Ayrshire it would appear that 

 above sixty tons have been raised on an English acre, the leaves not included. [Farmer s 

 Magazine, vols. xv. and xvi.) But such an extraordinary produce must have been ob- 

 tained by the application of more manure than can be provided, without injustice to 

 other crops, from the home resources of a farm ; and where turnips form a regular crop 

 in the rotation, no such produce is to be expected under any mode of culture. 



5424. The produce of the turnip in nutritive matter, as proved by Sir H. Davy, was 

 forty-two parts in a thousand ; of which seven were mucilage, thirty-four sugar, and one 

 gluten. Swedish turnips afforded sixty-four parts in a thousand of nutritive matter, of 

 which nine were starch, fifty-one sugar, two gluten, and two extract. According to Von 

 Thaer, 100 lbs. of turnips are equal to twenty -two of hay ; and an ox to get fat on 

 turnips ought to have one third of its weight daily. 



5425. To raise turnip seed, the usual mode is to select the most approved specimens of 

 the variety to be raised at the season when they are full grown ; and either to remove all 

 others from the field and leave them to shoot into flower stems next year, or to trans- 

 plant them to a place by themselves, where they will be secure from the farina of other 

 plants of their genus. In either case they must be protected by earthing up from the 

 winter's frost and rains, and in the ripening season from the birds. 



5426. The true sort of Swedish turnip can very easily be kept by only attending to the plants when in 

 flower. All the degenerated ones bear bright yellow flowers, which should be pulled out before the seed 

 ripens. The true sort have a broivnish yellow flower. This saves the expense of transplanting if a corner 

 or one ridge of a field can be found convenient for saving. 



5427. The Norfolk seed-growers have a sort of theory on the subject of transplanting turnips for seed 

 which it may be worth while to attend to. According to that theory, where turnip seed is collected from 

 such turnips as have been sown three or four years in succession, the roots are liable to be numerous and 

 long, and the necks or parts between the bulbs and leaves coarse and thick : and when taken from such as 

 have been transplanted every vear, these parts are liable to become too fine, and the tap-roots to be dimi- 

 nished in too great a proportion. Of course the most certain plan is to procure seed from turnips that are 

 transplanted one year and sown the next ; or, if they be transplanted once in three years, it is supposed, 

 that the stock may be preserved in a proper state of perfection. It is stated, that the method of perform- 

 ing this business in the best way, is to select such turnips as are of the best kinds and of the most perfect 

 forms from the field crops, and after cutting their tops oft', to transplant them, about the month of 

 November, or following month, into a piece of ground that has been put into a fine state of tillage by 

 repeated ploughing or digging over, and which should be situated as near the house as it can be, in order 

 that the birds may be better kept from it. The seed will mostly be ready for gathering in the end of July, 

 or in the following month. 



5428. Others cultivators, however, advise that the seed collected from a few turnips thus transplanted 

 should be preserved and sown in drills, in order to raise plants for seed for the general crop, drawing out 

 all such as are weak and improper, leaving only those that are strong and which take the lead ; and that 

 when these have formed bulbs, such as do not appear good and perfect should be taken out, as by this 

 means turnip seed may be procured, not only of a more vigorous nature, but capable of vegetating with 

 less moisture, and of producing stronger and more hardy plants. The practice of transplanting the whole 

 of the turnips for seed for the main crops, they contend, is not only highly expensive, but injurious, by 

 diminishing the strength of the plants from the destruction of their tap-roots. Very good seed may, how- 

 ever, be raised in either of the methods that have been here described. 



54'i9. The best Norfolk turnip-seed growers are of opinion that unless the seed be always saved from 

 transplanted roots, the stock will infallibly degenerate in the manner here described. The statement that 

 transplanting once in three years is sufficient, was a mere pretence with some of the growers to enable 

 them to save two thirds of the heavy expense which attends transplanting turnips, and to get the same 

 price for their seed as if it had been properly saved. The only exception to this is in what the Norfolk 

 farmers calls the "pudding" or " long pudding" turnip, which is too tender to bear the winter. For a 

 stock, a few sorts are taken up and protected from cold like mangold wurzel ; and for a general crop the 



