The Growth of Weeds Absolutely Abolished. 15 



eventually without any when the land has become 

 sufficiently charged with humus.* But this process 

 must only be continued for four years, during which a 

 turnip crop, taken after ploughing up the grass, should 

 be taken, followed by a cereal crop. Then a root crop 

 should be taken, and the following year the land again 

 laid down to grass with a light cereal crop, and the 

 process of forming a good turf recommenced. Every 

 time that this course is repeated the land will become 

 richer, and warmer, and the soil more thoroughly and 

 deeply disintegrated by the roots of plants, and there- 

 fore more able to yield better and more certain crops, 

 and crops less liable to the attacks of disease ; this is 

 especially so as regards the turnip crop, which is little 

 liable to finger-and-toe if repeated on the same land 

 only after a long interval. The formation of this turf 

 will also cheapen the processes of cultivation in two 

 ways, for it is hardly necessary to say that land deeply 

 and thoroughly permeated with vegetable matter is 

 much more easily ploughed and worked ; and I have 

 found that if the land is well filled, when laid down, 

 with a mixture of plants which have a large and power- 

 ful root system, the couch grasses are extinguished, or 

 nearly so, and the expense of cleaning the land, when 

 again brought under plough, absolutely abolished.! On 

 the rapid creation, then, of a turf composed of plants 

 calculated to leave the largest amount of vegetable 

 matter in the soil, and of plants well able to resist 

 drought, and contribute by their qualities to keep stock 



* Potatoes and turnips have now been successfully grown at Clifton- 

 on-Bowmont farm without the aid of any manure, except that supplied 

 by the turf {vide Appendix III.) 



t For the last fourteen years there have been no weeds worth removing. 

 Subsequent experience has shown, me that, in order to abolish the growth 

 of weeds, taking a turnip crop after grass is essential ; but, as shown 

 elsewhere, when the farm has once been so thoroughly cleaned that there 

 are no weeds on it worth removing, then the farmer, if his plans make it 

 expedient, may begin bis rotation with oats out of lea instead of turnips. 



