130 GARDENING FOE YOUNG AND OLD. 



twenty-four plants on an acre. If the turnips average 

 four pounds each, the one crop on the ridges would give 

 us less than thirty-five tons per acre, while the crop on 

 the flat, in the narrow rows, would give us over forty- 

 three tons per acre, or reckoning the turnips at sixty 

 pounds per bushel, the crop on the narrow rows would 

 give us one thousand four hundred and fifty-two bushels 

 to the acre, while in the wider rows the crop would be 

 less than one thousand one hundred and ninety-two 

 bushels to the acre. 



I am free to admit, that either crop would be a remark- 

 ably good one, but I am advocating good cultivation and 

 the liberal use of fertilizers. During the winter of 1881 

 '82, it would have been a very easy matter to have dis- 

 posed of thousands of bushels of ruta-bagas at fifty cents 

 a bushel, and even one thousand bushels per acre would 

 have afforded a magnificent profit. 



But before you can make a profit of five hundred dol- 

 lars an acre from a crop of turnips, you have something 

 to do. I speak of these prospective and possible profits 

 as an incentive to faith, hope, and labor. I want you to 

 have faith in good farming, and not be afraid to put 

 work and manure into the land. There are some draw- 

 backs and difficulties and many seeming discouragements; 

 there are drouths, Black-beetles, Turnip-lice and mildew, 

 but if there were none of these, turnips^ would never 

 bring fifty cents a bushel. The best remedies for all of 

 these is, the thorough preparation of the land, liberal 

 manuring and frequent cultivation between the rows 

 of plants, and careful thinning out and hoeing in the 

 rows. 



If flat cultivation is adopted and the land is prepared 

 in the autumn, as previously recommended, the manure 

 may be spread on the land in the spring before plowing ; 

 though I think it is better to plow the land first. My 

 own plan is, to draw the manure to the field during the 



