On the Cultivation of Oats. 



113 



grown in a dry climate exhaust the soil more than wheat or 

 barley. 



We may add, finally, with regard to the lowest group of oat- 

 producing soils/" especially the lighter descriptions, that the easiest 

 and cheapest way to increase their fertility is to pasture them two 

 or three years with sheep every rotation, and when turnips can 

 be grown, to use bone-dust for manure, and consume the whole 

 crop in situ. 



On all soft soils, composed either of black earth, soft loam, 

 or reclaimed peat, the cultivation of oats necessarily occupies a 

 prominent position. On these soils the cultivation of barley is 

 almost excluded, owing to their tendency to produce an excess 

 of straw injurious to the development of the grain. Wheat can be 

 grown with tolerable success on black land or soft loams situated 

 in a dry warm climate, but only at greater intervals than would 

 be required on harder and more clayey soils. Here then are 

 special cases where the systematic cultivation of oats becomes 

 indispensable as the principal means by Avhich an alternate 

 course of cropping may be carried on. In Ireland the main 

 grain-crop on all soft soils is oats, and even on hard land barley 



* All the best farmers in Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire adopt the Norfolk, or 

 four-course, system ; and when they grow oats, they always grow them as the fallow - 

 crop; and I have seen many fine crops, of good quality, grown after turnips in the 

 county of Norfolk. But upon strong, poor, sterile clay land, well drained, no crop 

 will pay better than the oat-crop after the summer fallow, which will produce on 

 this description of soil eight to ten quarters of the Black or White Tartarian sorts to 

 the statute acre. And it has long been a known fact, that wheat cannot be grown 

 to advantage, even on clay land, oftener than once in four years. The system that 

 has been adopted for some years by the best farmers of strong land in this county 

 (Bedfordshire) is one that may be continued with advantage for time ad infinitum, 

 that is, one-eighth of the fallows to be a summer or dead fallow, the other one-eighth 

 to be sown with winter tares, soiled with sheep, and then fallowed in the same manner. 

 The next year the one-eighth that was summer fallow to be sown with oats, and seeded 

 down ; and the other one-eighth, that Avas tares, to be sown with barley, and not 

 seeded, but after the barley to be sown with beans, the other being seeds. At 

 Michaelmas the two one-eighths, or one-fourth, to be wheat. Care should always be 

 taken to seed down only the part that was summer fallow, as seeds never flourish 

 after tares. From long experience and observation, I have noted that, if you should 

 by chance get a plant of clover after where the tares grew the year before, it will not 

 produce either keep or hay ; therefore it is obvious the tares take from the soil what is 

 needful for the nourishment of the clover plant. Care should also be taken that tlie 

 course of tares and dead fallow should be changed the next four years (or course), 

 and then the land will never be clover or seeds oftener than once in eight years. 



The time of sowing the spring crop (after the fallow) should be named. It must 

 entirely be regulated by the weather, care being taken never to lose an opportunity 

 when the land is sufficiently dry to work, after the commencement of the new year. 



The writer of this note has sown his barley and oats on poor, cold land (well 

 drained) early in January, and has always succeeded the best when very early. The 

 time to be fixed is whenever the land will work, whether it be in January, February, 

 or the early part of March. — S, Bennett, 



VOL. XII. I 



