274 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



70. Where the crop comes after the corn or grain crop 

 which has followed turnips, the land should be made as 

 clean as possible in the autumn, or if the state of the 

 weather or other causes will prevent this being done, early 

 attention should be given to the spring work of the field, 

 so as to get the land in good heart for the pea crop. The 

 soil should be ribbed some 12 inches or so wide, but the 

 seed may either be sown broadcast or drilled on the flat. 

 The width between the drills varies in practice from 1 8 to 

 24 inches. In view of the benefits attendant upon the 

 cleaning of the crop during its growth, in the early stages, 

 it is better to err in having the distances between the drills 

 too wide than too narrow. We are inclined to think that, 

 as a rule, the distances are too narrow. But in this, as in 

 other departments of culture, practical men have only to 

 conjecture what is best ; for the experiments, and the care- 

 ful mode of conducting these, which we have in these 

 papers and elsewhere advocated as essential to eliminate 

 practical results in connection with the cultivation of crops, 

 are as much needed in reference to the Leguminosas as the 

 cereals. If it is deemed necessary to apply a heavy dress- 

 ing of artificial manure, it will be advisable to apply it in 

 two dressings rather than in one half at the harrowing-in 

 of the seed, half at the first or second hoeing. However 

 clean the land may be when the sowing is completed, not 

 long will it be before it is found that it is bearing some- 

 thing more than pease ; and as it certainly is JJie aim of 

 the farmer to make pease the only, if not at least the prin- 

 cipal, crop which the land is to bear, it will be wise on his 

 part to go on, as soon as the drills are fairly up, with the 

 hoeing, this being thoroughly and carefully done. When 

 we see how often a so-called field of pease is as much a field 

 of weeds, we have abundant evidence of the need there is 

 for securing cleanliness of land, and of the reason for the 

 prejudice, moreover, that exists on the subject of pea cul- 

 ture. Not seldom, indeed, do we find that a crop is blamed 

 as the cause of dirty land, when the real nature of the case 

 is that it is the fault of the farmer, not that of the crop. 



