108 



Green Manuring. 



[May. 



fact that the land may be so dry after harvest that germina- 

 tion is very bad. 



The result is that green manuring forms a regular and 

 essential part of the system of husbandry only in districts 

 given over to special crops, such as the Fens, the Lothians, and 

 Ayrshire, where it is extensively used after early potatoes; the 

 market-gardening districts around Biggleswade; and the flax- 

 growing areas of North Ireland; or in cases where the nature of 

 the soil is such that special rotations are used, as for instance 

 on the London Clay in Essex, where a bare fallow provides 

 the necessary opportunity, or on the light blowy sands of East 

 Anglia, which can often only be profitably farmed by giving 

 one year in four to a nitrogen-gathering crop such as lupins. 

 Another system which is adopted in some parts is to sow the 

 green manure crop in the spring corn, as for a seeds ley, and 

 after harvest to let the green crop grow on till early in the 

 following 3'ear before turning it in. Systems of green manur- 

 ing can thus be classified under three main heads : — (1) Green 

 manure crops grown as catch crops in the intervals in the 

 rotation; (2) Green manure crops grown as part of a special 

 rotation in which the whole or a large part of one growing 

 season is given up to the green manure crop; (3) Green manure 

 crops sown in the spring corn, for turning in the following 

 year. 



To the first category belong the systems referred to above 

 as employed by early potato growers. Thus in the famous 

 potato districts of East Lothian and Ayrshire, rape or Italian 

 rye grass, or a mixture of the two, is sown down immediately 

 the tubers have been lifted, in any case not later than the third 

 week in August. Some growers then feed the green crop to 

 sheep, but many prefer to turn the crop in. 



Again, in the Holland division of Lincolnshire, and in the 

 black lands of the Fens, mustard, rape and oats are similarly 

 largely used by potato growers as early autumn-sown green 

 manures, and some farmers have latterly been trying beans for 

 the same purpose. In Essex and Suffolk, on the heavy lands 

 of the London Clay, it is a common practice to sow mustard 

 on the bare fallow in July, and plough it in before sowing- 

 winter corn ; similarly many flax growers in County Down have 

 got splendid results from mustard sown in August after the 

 flax has been pulled, and turned in during January or early 

 February. 



