192 CULTURE OF THE CAEROT. 



potatoes, and a good ploughman will cover nearly all 

 without difficulty. On the return-furrow the man or 

 boy who dropped follows after, covering up any that 

 may be left or displaced, and smoothing off the top 

 of the back-furrows where necessary. Potatoes thus 

 planted came out as fine as I ever saw any. 



The cost of cultivation in this mode, it must be 

 evident, is but trifling compared with the slower 

 method of hand-planting. The plan will require a skil- 

 ful ploughman, a quick, active lad, and a good yoke 

 of oxen, and the extent of the work will depend 

 somewhat on the state of the turf. The nutritive 

 equivalent in potatoes for one hundred pounds of good 

 hay is 3.19 pounds ; that is, it will take 319 pounds of 

 potatoes to afford the same amount of nourishment 

 as one pound of hay. The great value of roots is as a 

 change or condiment, calculated to keep the animal in 

 a healthy condition. 



THE CARROT (Daucus carota) is somewhat exten- 

 sively fed, and is a valuable root for milch cows. This, 

 like the potato, has been cultivated and improved from 

 a wild plant. Carrots require a deep, warm, mellow 

 soil, thoroughly cultivated, but clean and free from 

 weed-seed. The difference between a very good profit 

 and a loss on the crop depends much on the use of 

 land and manures perfectly free from foul seeds of 

 any kind. Ashes, guano, sea-weed, ground bone, ard 

 other similar substances, or thoroughly-rotted and 

 fermented compost, will answer the purpose. 



After ploughing deep, and harrowing carefully, the 

 seed should be sown with a seed-sower, in drills about 

 eighteen inches apart, at the rate of four pounds to 

 the acre, about the middle or twentieth of May. The 

 difference between sowing the fifteenth of May and the 

 tenth of June in New England is said to be nearly one 



