CHAPTER XV. 
TIIE TURNIP. 
“ I had rather be set quick i’ the earth 
And bowl’d to death with turnips.” 
Merry Wives, III., 4. 
VjJ^HE Turnip (Brcissica rapa) must be regarded as of 
'ujV quite secondary importance to the gardener, and in 
a small garden it will be found by many a prudent 
course to throw it out of the list, and to purchase turnips as 
the demands of the kitchen may render necessary. In large 
gardens, where regular successions of all kinds of vegetables 
are grown, tender and juicy turnips are produced the whole 
year round ; but in such as we may call middle-class gardens 
they are expected only in the autumn and winter, and to 
produce them for those seasons is a comparatively easy 
matter. Before describing the various methods adopted for 
obtaining turnips at different seasons of the year, it may 
be proper to remark that the turnip is fully as precarious in 
the garden as in the field, being more directly influenced for 
weal or woe by peculiarities of the seasons and the weather 
than any other garden crop, the potato alone excepted. A 
cold wet season will not produce good turnips, for the bulbs 
grow too fast and soon burst and rot in the ground, emitting 
a most offensive odour. A hot dry season causes them to 
become tap-rooted and misshapen, owing to their eager search 
for moisture, and in the end they may be compared with 
wooden nutmegs of a large size or very badly-diseased potatoes. 
Another point of some importance is that turnips do not long 
keep in good condition after they have completed their growth ; 
so that, unless the gardener’s management ensures a constant 
succession, the turnips come in a glut at one time, and very 
soon afterwards there are none at all. It is true they keep 
pretty well in the winter, and are then in greatest request ; 
but in spring and summer they must be used as fast as they 
