252 THE PEA CROP. 



that clover may be taken at eight years' interval, instead 

 of every fourth year. In this case peas would, on most 

 soils, be a more suitable crop than beans, and might with 

 advantage be substituted for them as a change, with either 

 the whole or a portion of the clover land, as already 

 described. On the stronger descriptions of soils, where 

 longer rotations are practised, it is always desirable to 

 place peas between two straw crops, and to treat them as 

 a fallow crop. If sown after a root crop, as is sometimes 

 the case, the straw is too luxuriant, and the yield is pro- 

 portionably diminished. In Scotland, on suitable soils, 

 they are taken instead of potatoes or beans, and generally 

 precede wheat ; but more commonly they are mixed with 

 the bean crop, and then take place in the regular rotation. 

 Peas, however, are not equal to beans as a fallowing crop ; 

 for although, chemically speaking, they are the same in 

 their effects on the soil, their, habit of growth is so different 

 as to render it well nigh impossible to keep the land clean, 

 and in a proper condition for the succeeding crop. If a 

 system of autumnal cultivation be properly carried out, 

 and the land well cleaned before the winter commences, 

 but little more is generally required to be done to it before 

 seed-time in the early spring. ^Then the horse-hoe should 

 be actively employed as long as the plants will admit of 

 it, after which their trailing growth is generally sufficient 

 to keep down the annual weeds, and to leave the surface 

 tolerably free from them at harvest-time. In the pea- 

 growing districts of the south, a more negligent mode of 

 farming is generally met with. The weeds of the past 

 year are commonly allowed to seed after harvest, and are 

 ploughed in with the light furrow slice of the district. In 

 the spring the peas are got in sometimes in narrow drills, 

 at others broadcast too early to admit of anything like 

 a good cleaning, and, indeed, before the seeds have ger- 

 minated. A single hoeing is at most all that is given to 



