62 
On the Drill Husbandry of Turnips. 
wards adopted the use of these harrows when sowing grass-seeds 
in corn. 
I soon had an opportunity of witnessing other advantages of 
these light harrows, as compared with common ones. I had 
drilled several acres of turnips without making the harrows fol- 
low the drill, as the ground was then rather too wet ; but, instead 
of becoming drier, a heavy rain came on, and nothing could be 
done to the land for two or three days. At the end of that time 
I had it harrowed with the light harrows, and, as this did not take 
out the drill-marks, it was again harrowed with them the next 
day, which put it into a very good state, and from that time the 
turnips grew so well that they eventually were considered the best 
crop in the neighbourhood that season. An adjacent field, treated 
in every way similar to mine, save that it was harrowed by the 
common harrows instead of the light ones, had so few turnips in 
it that it could scarcely be considered one-fourth of a crop. The 
superiority of the new harrows was thus so apparent, that the use 
of them spread in the neighbourhood. 
Another means of causing the plants to grow more rapidly at 
first is, to roll the land the first time it is in a favourable state 
a/'ter the turnips are out of the ground, taking care, of course, 
to do this along the rows, and not across them, or you would bury 
part of the plants. 
When ridging was more common with my neighbours than it is 
now, one of them had got some land ridged for swedes, and was 
caught in this state by rather damp weather — that is, not suffici- 
ently wet to stop the manuring, splitting the rows to cover it, 
&c., nor to prevent the turnip-seed being drilled, although too 
damp to allow the land being rolled after the drill : he therefore 
went on drilling with the hope that the weather would clear up 
and become dry, thinking, that if it did, he would have had an 
excellent turnip season. But, during the second day, the rain 
came down in torrents, making the land so wet that nothing could 
be done to it for several days, and when it had become dry it was 
too late to adopt the usual means of covering the seed — part of it 
had grown. About a fortnight was allowed to elapse after the 
plants appeared, to see the result ; because, during that period, it 
was very difficult to say what would be the best course to pursue. 
The land having been very finely pulverized before ridging, and 
the seed drilled rather deeply, the furrows or channels in the 
ridges seemed like the bottom of a dried-up pond, with scattered 
turnip-plants, few and far between, no larger than they had been 
the last ten days, but less likely to grow because there were flies 
on them, basking in the sun and sheltered by the walls of hardened 
soil on each side of them. The land was cracking with sudden 
drought, and thus tending to retard the growth of the turnips ; 
