28 
Rotations. 
In the Roothings of Essex, again, it is a common practice 
to follow a root crop — especially mangolds — with a bare fallow. 
This system of practically fallowing the land for two years in 
succession may at first sight appear strange and even wasteful, 
but it is a special system devised for the purpose of killing out 
wild oats. The wild oat (Avena fatua ) is one of the most 
troublesome weeds met with in that part of the country, and it 
is no uncommon thing to see a crop of corn — wheat or oats — 
completely ruined for market purposes by the admixture with 
this weed. The plant grows similar to ordinary oats, will 
survive the worst of winters, and a sufficient amount of grain 
drops off to re-seed the land, while it will keep alive at least 
two years in the soil. The root crop, followed by bare fallow, 
kills out all seed in the soil, or if any sprouts the plants will be 
killed in turn. The present writer found from experience on 
one farm in Essex that putting the land away in grass for a 
few years had the same effect : when ploughed up again the 
wild oats were completely gone. 
Another practice in Essex — in the Essex five-course shift — is 
growing two corn crops in succession. This would be reckoned 
contrary to the rules of good husbandry in some parts of 
England, but in this case wheat is followed by barley on land 
that has been well tilled and manured previously. Further, it 
is a case of following a deep-rooting plant with one of shallow 
growth, and on land in good condition a better quality of barley 
is obtained ; if barley were grown immediately after roots fed 
off with sheep it would often be too rank and strong and the 
grain deficient. 
A peculiar rotation practised in Surrey is as follows : — Corn, 
potatoes, peppermint, corn, potatoes, corn, catch crop (tares), 
potatoes. Everything was sold off and fertility was kept up by 
a copious use of manures ; corn of various kinds was grown for 
a rest between the more valuable crops. The peculiarity is of 
course the growth of peppermint as a regular farm crop, it being 
sometimes “ left down ” for several years. The soil is a clay 
loam over chalk. 
The standard four-course shift is admittedly, in many 
localities, too short for the successful growth of turnips and 
clover. Turnips, and more particularly swedes, are very 
liable to the disease called finger-and-toe — a fungoid disease 
which may infect the soil for years — and thus several expe- 
dients are adopted to have these roots coming round only 
once in, say, eight years, such as having only half of the root 
break in swedes and the other half in , say, potatoes, and then 
alternate these the next rotation ; and so on. 
The same difficulty is found with clover. Clover “ sick- 
ness ” is very prevalent with the Broad Red clover which is 
