15 



" When the plants are about the size of a radish, thej ai'o 

 hoed with a turnip hoe, leaving the plants in the row about 

 twelve inches apart. If any of the seeds fail, and there happen 

 not to be an even crop, the roots where they are too thick are 

 drawn out before the hoeing takes place, and transplanted to 

 fill up the vacant places, and insure a full crop ; which is always 

 certain, inasmuch as 99 plants out of 100 thrive and do well. 

 In transplanting", care is necessary to prevent the point of the 

 root from turning upwards." 



"The weeds, while the plants are young, are kept hoed ; 

 but after the head of the plant has once spread, no weed can 

 live under its shade ; and the expense of hoeing afterwards is 

 trifling indeed." 



" The whole of the crop is taken up in the month of Novem- 

 ber,* in dry weather. The tops are cut off near the crown of 

 the plants, and the plants, when perfectly dr}^, are piled up in a 

 shed, and covered with straw sufficiently thick to preserve them 

 from the frost. They kept last year till the latter end of March, 

 and they would have kept much longer." 



"Where a field selected for a crop of beet [the Mangel Wurt- 

 zel] happens to be in a foul state, the seed had better be sown 

 in a garden, and the whole field planted with the young beet, 

 when of the size of a radish. This will give time for cleaning 

 the ground, and fitting it for a crop ; for although the beets are 

 destroyers of weeds, it is not meant to recommend sowing them 

 on foul ground, or in any way to encourage a slovenly system 

 •f farming." 



" The method of cultivating the heet root here recommended 

 13 the same as that used in the cultivation of turnips, in Northum- 

 berland and other parts of the North [of England] with this ex- 

 ception, that the rows there are twenty-seven inches apart. 

 There may be reasons in the North for still preserving that 

 Fpace ; but in Essex the eflect of it, in the cultivation of the beet 

 root, would be, that instead of forty-eight tons per acre, forty- 



* The time of taking vp the Mangel Wurtzel must be regulated by the 

 climate. There is sometiiues a frost in the latter part of October, in this 

 county, severe enough to injure this root, exposed, as the greater part of ii 

 is, above ground. Light frosts, however, will do it no harm, while th»=' 

 roots remain iu the ground, and in a dfgree sheltered by therr leaves. 



