130 
On Green or Fodder Crops. 
I admit we do not get as much, food per acre as from cabbages, yet, taking 
into consideration the respective expenses of cultivation and the time occupied 
in the growth, kale ought to have the preference." 
Mr. Clare Sewell Read thinks that a late crop has more chance 
of withstanding a hard winter than a forward one, and he has 
rendered me the following particulars of his experience in 
making trial of the crop : — 
" I have grown thousand-headed kale for half a dozen years, but last winter 
so entirely killed a fine crop that I am rather dubious about sowing any more 
of it for spring feeding. When intended to stand through the winter it evi- 
dently should not be too forward, or it may perish from the severity of the 
weather.* I grow it as I should swedes or mangolds, drilling it on the 
flat, 24 inches apart, and generally applying farmyard-manure, depositing 
from 3 to 5 cwts. of superphosphate with the seed. I have grown it upon 
strong land, sowing it in April, and feeding it off in August ; on loamy soils 
drilling it in May, eating it between Michaelmas and Christmas ; and have 
also sown some after vetches in June and early in July for spring feed for 
ewes and lambs. In all cases I have had fair, and occasionally very heavy, 
crops, and have invariably grown good cereals after the kale. But the stalks 
are a great nuisance, and a heavy expense to remove, and it must be consumed 
where it is grown to make the most of it. It is no doubt useful sheep-feed 
upon all lands that are at all unkind for turnips." 
While a few crops like Mr. Read's were destroyed by the 
severe weather of the winter of 1880—1, the generality escaped 
scot free : and as some of the latter were decidedly more forward 
than his, an opinion of Mr. Russell will be well worthy of con- 
sideration, in the endeavour to discover the cause. Mr. Russell 
thinks that in Arctic winters kale on the hills has a better 
chance of escaping injury than that in the vales. His farm 
is situated tolerably high, and during the entire period he has 
been growing the plant he has never lost a single crop. 
In April 1881 I expressed an opinion in ' The Field ' that 
thousand-headed kale is far superior to root-crops in the capa- 
bility of resisting frosts, and threw out a suggestion that 
growers of the plant would do well to make public their expe- 
rience on the point how their crops endured the severity of the 
preceding winter. The ensuing Meek brought three replies, 
extracts from all of which will be of great interest. 
Mr. A. J. Burrows, of Pluckley, Kent, wrote : — 
*' The extreme hardiness of this very useful forage plant has been suffi- 
ciently tested during the past season to enable growers to pronounce with 
♦ The 18th of January, 1881, is regarded as the most disastrous day to East 
Anglican Agriculture that has been experienced for upwards of 50 years. A 
level coating of snow, which had previously preserved aJl crops fr^m the excep- 
tionally severe froets, was suddenly blown clean oflf the land into the roads and 
fences. The icy blast lasted for nearly twenty-four hours, and not only was my 
kale kUkd, but almost every other plant that was exposed to the awful hurricane 
was greatly injured or utterly destroyed. — Clake Sewell Bead. 
