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Of the small grains, barley is to me the most profitable- 

 My land yields readily fifty bushels to the acre, when it is in 

 condition to be seeded down to grass. Barley always finds a 

 good market, and the straw is valuable fodder for store cattle. 



ROOT CROPS. 



It is not proposed to discuss here the value of root crops. 

 It is enough to say that I have raised from four to seven 

 thousand bushels annually for the last five years — last year 

 sixty-five hundred bushels — this year forty-three hundred and 

 twenty-six bushels. The roots raised are the mangel wurzel, 

 carrot, ruta baga and English turnip. The seed used for the 

 last four years has been imported by the Massachusetts Society 

 for Promoting Agriculture. For mangel wurzel, strong rich 

 clayey loam is best, manured with eight cords of barn-yard 

 manure, well rotted, to the acre, about as much more applied 

 in the drills, with the addition of twelve or fifteen bushels of 

 refuse salt. The seed should be soaked thirty-six hours before 

 planting, the water being hot when poured upon it; and 

 it should be dropped by hand and covered with the hoe. It 

 is very seldom that a machine will drop and cover mangel seed 

 in such a way as to secm-e an even crop. A strip of plank four 

 inches wide and three feet long, from the lower side of which 

 one and one-fourth inch pins project two inches, with spaces 

 of seven inches, applied lengthwise on the top of the drill by 

 means of a light frame handle, is a convenient implement for 

 making the holes into which the seed is to be dropped. This 

 avoids the labor of thinning the plants, and enables the culti- 

 vator to cover the seeds at a uniform depth. Mangel wurzels 

 are raised almost exclusively for my milch cows — a few being 

 fed to store hogs. They should be sowed by the 20th of May. 



Carrots are raised on rather warmer, lighter land, enriched 

 with rotted barn-yard manure, ten cords to the acre. The land 

 is ploughed twice, raked smooth and rolled lightly. The seed 

 is sowed by machine, in rows from ten to thirteen inches apart. 

 I prefer the short orange, as the soundest and heaviest root ; 



