108 RUTA BAGA CULTURE. Part I. 



Time and manner of harvesting. 



104. This must depend, in some measure, upon 

 the age of the turnips ; for, some will have their 

 full growth earlier than others ; that is to say, 

 those which are sown first, or traisplantediirst, 

 will be ripe before those which are sown, or trans- 

 planted latest. I have made ample experiments as 

 to this matter ; and I will, as in former cases, first 

 relate what I did ; and then give my opinion as to 

 what ought to be done. 



105. This was a concern in which I could have 

 no knowledge last fall, never having seen any 

 tarnips harvested in America, and knowing, that, 

 as to American /?-os/s, English experience was only 

 likely to mislead ; for, in England, we leave the 

 roots standing in the ground all the winter, where 

 we feed them off with sheep, which scoop them out 

 to the very bottom ; or we pull them as we want 

 them, and bring them in to give to fatting oxen, to 

 cows, or to hogs. I had a great opinion of the 

 hardiness of the Ruta Baga, and w^as resolved to try 

 it here, and I did try it upon too large a scale. 



106. I began with the piece, the first mentioned 

 in Paragraph 46. A part of them were taken up 

 on the 13th of December, after we had had some 

 pretty hard frosts. The manner of doing the work 

 was this. We took up the turnips merely by pull- 

 ing them. The greens had been cut off and given 

 to cattle before. It required a spade, however, 

 just to loosen them along the ridge, into which their 

 tap-roots had descended very deeply. We dug 

 holes, at convenient distances, of a square form, 

 and about a foot deep. We put into each hole a- 

 bout fifty bushels of turnips, piling them up above 

 the level of the surface of the land, in a sort of 

 pyramidical form. When the heap was made, we 

 scattered over it about a truss of Rye-Straw, and 



