1SS2.] 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



91 



year we demand 8,000,000 acres of trees and 

 |iliiiitlcss than 1,000,000 acres to replace them. 

 The end is so plain even a fool may read it as 

 hr runs.- — Gen. Jas. T. Brishin in JV. Y. 

 World. 



ROOTS AND HOW TO GROW THEM. 



The root-grower is the comiielitor of the 

 tiisiloer, if, indeed, he i.s not the original en- 

 siloer himself For in preserving viml?. in pits 

 tlic process is nothing more nor less than en- 

 silage, the fresh roots being ])reserved in pits 

 covered with earth to protect them from de- 

 cay and from drying, so that they may be fed 

 (luring a long season when no crops are 

 grown. With abundance of roots no farmer 

 needs ensilage, excepting a small supply to 

 carry him through the summer months until 

 roots come around again. The advantages 

 and economy of feeding roots are in no way 

 le.sser or fewer than those appertaining to en- 

 silage, and, in fact, the balance is even in fa- 

 vor of roots, because they can be preserved 

 much more cheaply than ensiloed fodder, and 

 do not lose any portion of their nutritive 

 elements by chemical changes during the pe- 

 riod of their storage. The average yield of 

 roots, too, is considerably in excess of that of 

 corn-fodder or those other crops which are 

 used in ensilage, and no expensive silo and 

 troublesome process of pressure under heavy 

 weights are required for their keeping. With 

 a good stock of roots a farmer or dairyman, 

 or a feeder of beef, mutton or pork, can suc- 

 ceed perfectly well with pasture and a few 

 acres of soiling crops to help him out until 

 the winter comes around, when the necessary 

 succulent and digestible food is in readiness 

 for the animals. In short, if every former 

 should have a silo, as he is advised by some 

 persons, he should also have a root cellar as 

 well, both to give his stock a change of food 

 and to reduce the cost of the construction of 

 silos large enough to furnish fodder for the 

 whole season. But it is hardly necessary to 

 try to prove the enormous value of a good 

 crop of roots to the farmer ; every one admits 

 that the trouble is that few farmers know how 

 to grow tbera or will take the trouble to leani. 

 They fear the cost, the labor and the manure 

 required, forgetting that labor and manure 

 are the first essentials to profitable crojis, and 

 that without these the soil has no inducement 

 to be generous, and refuses to grant any 

 favcus whatever. Nothing comes out of 

 nothing, and it is in vain to expect large 

 and valuable crops without furnishing the 

 elements out of which they are pro- 

 duced. 



But before we proceed fuither It may be 

 well to enumerate and describe the various 

 root crops that are known in our ordinary 

 agriculture. These are — to begin with the 

 best known — turnips, rutabagas, carrots, 

 mangels and sugar-beets ; of these the first is 

 the least, and the last the most valuable. 

 Every one can grow turnips, that is, to .some 

 extent, but it is not easy to grow a maximum 

 crop of 30 or 40 tons to the acre, and it is, in 

 fact, no easier to grow this than to produce 

 the same quantity of mangels or sugar-beets. 

 The white turnip is, however, a very i)oor 

 root, as may be seen by comparing the figures 

 of the following table : 



Composition and Value of Root Crops. 



Turnips 



( 'iirrots 



KutubaKHH 



INtat)K(!lH 



Siij^iir-bwottt 



(ireeii corn fod- 

 der 



H-:i° 



3-" = 



Fat. 



0.1 

 0.2 

 O.l 

 0.1 

 0.1 



0.1 



A -A 



16 

 24 

 24 

 no 



a") 



The composition of corn fodder is given 

 for comparison. Turnips and rutabagas, 

 which are, in fact, turnips, are open to the 

 serious objection that they are not suitable 

 food for milch cows, giving a .strong odor 

 and Havor to the milk and the butter, which 

 cannot be altogether avoided by any device 

 or method of feeding. Turnips have the 

 advantage of very quick growth so that a 

 crop sown in August or early in September 

 may yield a very considerable amoinit of 

 feed. Rutabagas should be sown early in 

 July, but white turnips not before August. 

 Two pounds of seed per acre are used for 

 either. Phosi)hate of lime, either in the form 

 of bone dust or superphosphate, is the domi- 

 nant fertilizer for turnips, and always helps 

 to produce a good crop. One good use for 

 the turnip crop is for seeding down with grass; 

 the broad leaves shade and shelter the young 

 grass and the small trurnips left after pull- 

 ing the larger ones afford shelter in the 

 winter and manure in the spring. The best 

 grass and clover seedings we have had have 

 been with turnips in August. For carrots we 

 have liking and an aversion; we like to feed 

 them, but hate to grow them or to harvest 

 them, for both are troublesome operations. 

 As a farm crop for cattle feeding, no variety 

 but the large orange Belgian should be grown, 

 for the roots of all but this kind penetrate so 

 deeply and the crowns grow so near the sur- 

 face as to make it very troublesome to harvest 

 them. The first growth of carrots is very 

 small and slow, and unless the ground is very 

 free from weeds the plants are smothered be- 

 fore they can be seen. But while we have 

 mangels and sugar beets, carrots may be coa- 

 fined to the garden, where hand-weeding may 

 be tolerated. Mangels are a species of beet, 

 sometimes called the mangold wurzel-beet, 

 and are familiarly spoken of by the English 

 farmers as "wuzzles." Here we have mangled 

 the name in our own fashion, taking the left 

 handle of it, while the English have taken 

 the right. But they are a magnificent root, 

 call them by whatever name we may. Heacli- 

 ing a weight of 24 to 4(1 pounds, the single 

 specimen, growing half out of the ground 

 and holding but very loosely to the soil, they 

 are harvested with the greatest ease. We 

 have ourselves loaded a two-hor.se wagon with 

 the huge roots, of which 120 filled a 40-bushel 

 box level with the edge and made a full ton, 

 taking them in the row as they came ; 

 but it was, to tell the truth, in a spot 

 where the compost heap which manured 

 the field had stood for three months and 

 where the soil was, of course, unusually ricli. 

 But of that crop fully 10 per cent, would 

 weigh over 20 pounds and one root out of 20 

 would reach a weight of 24 pounds. One 

 of these roots made a good meal for a cow, 

 and the tender, crisp flesh literally melted un- 



der, or we should, strictly speaking, eay over, 

 her teeth. But to our text again. Mangels 

 are of several kinds— the long top rooted; the 

 ovoid or egg-shaped, and the globe ■ they are 

 of several colors — red, yellow, and orange. 

 The best, to our mind, are the long red, of 

 which kind was the crop above referred to ; 

 the yellow globe is said to be the best suited 

 f(u- light soils, jilthough our long reds were 

 grown on a sand that .sonictiines blows a live- 

 ly fashion on a breezy, dry day ; the yellow 

 ovoid is .said to be the largest cropper, although 

 our long reds yielded at the rate of 1.200 

 bushels per acre, or an ecpiivalent of .'}(j tons. 

 Then there is the Norbiton (iiant long red 

 mangel, one whose name certainly justifies a 

 large crop if length of name could do this; 

 (uid it is credited with being enormon.sly pro- 

 ductive, single roots weighing 100 pounds, 

 and the whole crop reaching 72 tons per acre, 

 or nearly half a ton to a square rod. But 

 this enormous yield is by no means incredible, 

 for roots growing 14 incthes apart in 3 foot 

 rows and weighing 16| pounds each only 

 would make a ton to two square rods, or 

 about 80 tons to the acre, and what could be 

 done on one two s(piare rods might surely be 

 done on SO of them, if it would pay to do it. 

 But, as a rule, enormous crops cost more than 

 they come to, and it is the medium-sized 

 crops that are the most profitable, and any 

 farmer may be well ^-satisfied with 36 tons of 

 good sound roots to the acre, which is equiva- 

 lent to the feeding of six cows for a i)eriod of 

 six months of three cows for a year. 



Another excellent root, and even more ex- 

 cellent than all the rest, is the sugar-beet, with 

 18i per cent of solid dry matter, of which 15 

 per cent is carVio-hydrates and 1 i)er cent is 

 albuminoids: and which thus makes an ex- 

 actly complementary food for clover hay and 

 wheat bran, or cotton-seed moal, all together 

 forming a perfectly nutritious, complete and 

 well-balanced food. Of this root there are 

 two kinds, the small French sugar-beet, ex- 

 tremely rich in sugar, so as to be a tempting 

 morsel to the village boys on their way to or 

 from school, and the larger improved sugar- 

 beet produced by the Hon. Henry Lane, of 

 Cornwall. Vt., after many years of cultiva- 

 tion and inlireeding, so to speak, and which 

 has yielded .'i"> and 40 tons to the acre. 



All the best tribe require tM .siime sort of 

 cultivation. A light, warm, sandy loam made 

 rich with well-rotted compost, and reinforced 

 by 500 pounds per acre of the special beet fer- 

 tilizer and 3.50 pounds per acre of salt, these 

 huge roots revel in; they grow .so fast that 

 they cannot make their way into the soil, and 

 so make their way out of it, standing in all 

 sorts of grotesque and comical ways — upright, 

 leaning, and nodding to each other, twin 

 roots irying to divorce themselves, and roots 

 separated trying to embrace each other, but 

 all stout and robust and ruddy, doing their 

 best to make the farmer look as comical as 

 themselves. To reach this result we must 

 plow the ground early in April, and harrow ; 

 mark it out with a furrow-marker made of 4 

 strips of 2 by 8, 12 feel long plank set on edge 

 30 inches apart, and connected by 3 cross- 

 pieces gained in and firmly spiked on to the 

 •upper edge, and attached to a draught-pole 

 well braced, that the machine may not wabble, 

 but go steadily and evenly, and mark out 



