AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 257 



The hea^y rains of August made another hoeing necessary, 

 and surcharged the ground so much with moisture, that all 

 roots increased much less in that month than during the 

 same time in the two last years." The Messrs. Little, "in 

 the course of the season, thinned their plants, and left them 

 from six to twelve inches apart in the rows. They Avere 

 once hoed, and ploughed three times between the rows." 

 Mr. Powel, in raising a previous crop, had placed the rows 

 thirty inches apart, and left the plants six inches apart in 

 the rows. He says, " I this year desired smaller roots, which 

 might grow so closely as by their leaves to protect the soil 

 as much as possible from the rays of the sun. My cultiva- 

 tor, by its peculiar form, enabled me to cut off the weeds 

 when the plants were so young, that, if I had applied the 

 plough, their crowns must have been covered in many in- 

 stances by earth occasionally falling from its land side. The 

 failure which attends the cultivation of most root crops in 

 drills, proceeds from the neglect of weeds in their early sta- 

 ges. Four or five days of delay frequently make the diffe- 

 rence of fifteen days in the labor of making clean an acre of 

 ground. The same weeds which a boy with a sharp shingle 

 could remove at the commencement of one week, may before 

 the end of the next require the application of an implement 

 drawn by a horse. 



' " I ascribe my success, in great measure, to the use of 

 Wood's extraor dinar ij plough, which enters the soil more 

 deeply, and pulverizes it more perfectly, than any other I 

 have ever seen, with equal force, in any country ; to the use 

 of cultivators, which complete the production of fine tilth; 

 to the destruction of the weeds on their first appearance — 

 leaving the smallest space upon which a horse can walk be- 

 tween the rows ; and, above all, to planting the seeds of a 

 proper kind upon a surface which is kept perfectly flat. '^ 



' General Remarks. Agriculturists have not agreed whe- 

 ther it is most expedient to plant the seeds of this root on 

 ridges or on a level. Colonel Powel condemns planting on 

 ridges in this country, as a practice not adapted to our soil 

 and climate, in which vegetables are very liable to suffer by 

 drought. He says, " Among the various practices into 

 which we have been seduced by the plausible theories of the 

 advocates of European husbandry, there is none which ap- 

 pears to me more absurd than that which has led us to drill 

 or dibble our crops on ridges. The English farmer wisely 

 contends with the evils produced by too much rain; the 

 22=^ 



