248 THE PHILADELPHIA FLORIST. [Dec'k 



yf) The following few remarks on Green Crops I offer, as the subject 

 y is an important one, and if they do not agree with the requirements 

 j of your climate and practice, you will please modify them to suit. 



The term " green crops " is applied to turnips, carrots, mangel 

 wurzel, parsnips, rape, vetches, cabbages, grass when consumed for 

 soiling purposes, and potatoes when fed on the farm. To derive all 

 the benefits from the culture of green crops, the latter must invariably 

 be consumed on the farm, not sold, as is generally the case with the 

 potato crop, but manufactured into manure, remembering the old 

 proverb, "muck is the mother of money." By the cultivation of 

 green crops we are enabled to adopt a regular system of cropping — 

 to keep our farm uniformly and judiciously fertile, from the abundance 

 of manure derived from the feeding of cattle on nutritious crops. — 

 There is no land, possessing any tillage capabilities, but can, with the 

 present appliances for improving the soil, be rendered lit for green 

 crop cultivation, from the light sands of Norfolk and the sandy soils 

 of New Jersey, to the clays of Pennsylvania and the tenacious clays 

 of the coast of Guinea; we read one and the same lesson, viz, that by 

 judiciously cultivating green crops, we create a power capable of 

 ameliorating the physical imperfections of the soil. The culture of 

 green crops enables us to maintain more cattle, of a purer breed, and 

 to keep them in the best condition. Green crops are not so exhaust- 

 ing as grain. The turnip possesses large leaves, which as organs of 

 nurishment takes a good deal of food from the air, and consequently 

 less from the soil — whereas a grain crop, wheat for instance, pos- 

 sesses a narrow system of leaves, is allowed to ripen its seed, which 

 latter is sent to market, and sold, making little if any return. In fact 

 in selling crops we but sell so much of the fertility of our farm. Now 

 the turnip being a biennial plant, is generally consumed before its seeds 

 are matured, hence, it is not so exhausting as a crop of wheat. Again, 

 manure can be directly applied in almost any quantities to green crops 

 without injury — not so to a grain crop, for such an application would 

 encourage the growth of the straw, at (he expense of the grain. — 

 Turnips and carrots &c, yield from five to seven times the actual 

 quantity of food that corn crops do; and since stock follows subsist- 

 ence, it is plain, that a crop which will produce five times more food 

 than another, would feed five times as many cattle. And if the farmer's 

 aim be to raise the largest crops, at the smallest cost, in the shortest 

 time and at the least expense, is it not his interest as well as his duty 

 to fix his attention to those systems of culture, that would produce 

 laro-e returns, unattended with undue exhaustion of the land 1 The 

 growth of turnips, carrots, potatos, &c, allows the soil to be freed J 

 from weeds, hence, such crops are appropriately termed cleansing A 

 crops ; as also restoratives, because as they are generally, as they should G> 



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