56 Early Sowing and Late Pulling of Roots. 



junction with oats or middlings, produced bacon of first-class 

 quality 



Close confinement in per-s from time of birth to time of 

 marketing had a tendency to injure the quality of the bacon, 

 though the rational use of dairy by-products seemed to com- 

 pensate largely for lack of exercise. 



Early Sowing and Late Pulling of Roots. 



The Report of the Director of the Canadian Government 

 Experimental Farms for 1900 contains an account of some 

 tests conducted during that year at Ottawa to ascertain the 

 influence of early sowing and late pulling of roots. For 

 this purpose 27 varieties of turnips or swedes, 22 varieties of 

 mangolds, and 19 varieties of carrots were chosen. All these 

 crops were sown, in drills two feet apart, on similar soil which 

 had received the same treatment. Two sowings were made, 

 the first on May 16th and the second on May 30th, while the 

 first pulling was on October 16th, and the second on Novem- 

 ber 6th. The yields are given per acre, calculated from the 

 weights of roots gathered from one row 66ft. in length. 



The average yields of the twenty-seven varieties of turnips 

 (per acre) are as follows : — 



Average of 1st sowing, ist pulling - 32 tons* i,54ilbs 



„ 2nd „ „,,---- 26 „ 430 „ 



„ ist „ 2nd „ - - - 35 „ 1,219 „ 



„ „ 2nd „ ,,„--- - 28 „ 1,218 „ 



These yields point to the advantage of early sowing, an 

 increase of 6 \ or 7 tons per acre having been thus obtained. 

 The additional twenty-one days allowed in the autumn also 

 yielded an increase of about 2 J tons. 



The results with mangolds were very different. The earlier- 

 sown plots only gave about a quarter of a ton more per acre 

 (a considerable increase is stated to have been obtained from 

 similar experiments in 1898), while the second pullings gave 



"Tons of 2,ooolbs. 



