THE MANURE. 7 



potash in the land : if, therefore, you will give it an extra 

 feed of this mineral when manuring for onions, by applying 

 either five hundred pounds of muriate of potash, or eighty 

 bushels of unleached wood-ashes, you can follow these as 

 well as any other crop with onions. Were there no other 

 reason, the clean tilth which carrots insure makes it an ex- 

 cellent crop to precede onions. In the fertile lands of the 

 West, the method of procedure is briefly this : Land on 

 which grows the bush-hazel is selected, if accessible, the 

 bushes cut down, and the turf surface but little more than 

 pared in spring with the plough. In this condition it is 

 usually allowed to remain a season exposed to the drying 

 effects of the sun, when it is most thoroughly harrowed and 

 raked, and all the numerous roots and waste are burned, the 

 land ploughed to a moderate depth, and the seed sown 

 either broadcast or in drills. Should the early part of the 

 season prove very wet, the crop sowed broadcast is at times 

 smothered under a rapid growth of weeds ; while with a 

 favoring season, as high as eight hundred bushels to the 

 acre have been harvested. 



After the harvesting of the crop which is to precede 

 onions, let the land have a fall-ploughing, and be thrown 

 up into ridges, which will not only help destroy noxious 

 weeds and witch-grass, as above stated, but will leave the 

 land light, in a condition to be worked successfully early in 

 the spring, — a great desideratum for a crop that usually 

 requires the entire season to mature it. 



THE MANURE. 



ONIONS REQUIRE the very best of manure, in the most 

 tempting condition, and plenty of it at that. Peruvian 

 guano, fish-guaiio, pig-manure, barn-manure, night-soil, kelp, 



