CARTER AND CO.’S GARDENER’S VADE-MECUM FOR 18G2. 
101 
ridgelets up again, and the seed is sown as before. This 
is the best plan in the case of very stiff soils ; or, if only 
one autumn ploughing bo given, then the spring cultivation 
must bo more elaborate, and one or two ploughings must 
be given in order to the thorough cultivation and cleans- 
ing of the land before, as in the former ease, it receives the 
manure and the seed. This spring cultivation should be 
confined to the lighter class of soils. 
The soed may be dibbled instead of being drilled ; and 
this is a very common practice : in this case, women or 
boys arc furnished with a bag of seed and a blunt dibble ; 
each stands on onosideof the drill with the right foot upon 
it and the right hand over it ; a small hole is made, and 
2 or 3 capsules or seeds are dropped from the left hand 
into it, and covered by a sliding movement of the right 
foot, which half stands upon the place, while the next hole 
is made 15 or 18 inches farther on. This plan diminishes 
the labour of singling the plants, as they come up in small 
bunches at the distance required. 
By and bye, as in May and June, when the plants are 
tolerably well up, the horse-hoc is sent down the intervals 
between the rows, and women following with hoe in hand, 
singling out the rows or bunches, and the ridge is hoed 
clean of small weeds. The horse-hoeing is repeated at 
fortnightly intervals during July and August; in fact as 
long as the growing leaves permit, and a second hand-hoe- 
ing clears the ground left by the horse-drawn tool. The 
crop must be harvested before frost. It is drawn and 
thrown in rows, and the leaves are cut off, and the roots 
are thrown into carts and drawn to heaps, covered with 
straw, and after lying a week to somewhat dry and hinder 
fermentation, it is covered up, and is safo till wanted up 
till late in the following summer ; though, as already 
stated, it may be safely used at once. The crop may be 
from 20 tons (a fair crop) up to 40 tons, and even more per 
acre. There is no crop, unless it be the Italian Rye-grass, 
which is so gross a feeder as the Mangold. Almost any 
quantity of farm-dung and ground and salt and super- 
phosphate with it may be usefully applied, with the cer- 
tainty of its producing a corresponding crop. 
Flax Culture is diminishing in this country, notwith- 
standing every attempt to bolster it up. On rich loamy 
soils, after no matter what crop, if only the land be clean 
and in good heart, Linseed is sown broad-cast, 10 pecks per 
acre, early in April, and hand-weeded in May, and pulled 
as soon as the seed-bolls are brown in July. If the seed is 
allowed to become thorouglily ripe, the fibre is coarse. The 
largest sum of money, as a general rule, is made per acre 
when the plant is pulled at the earliest indication of ripe- 
ness of seed. The seed is got out by rippling as it is called, 
that is, drawing the plant in liandfulls through an upright 
comb of teeth. The plant is steeped either for weeks in the 
dew, or for days in a tank of hot water ; and, as soon as 
fermentation has released the fibres from one another, it is 
taken out, squeezed, dried, and scutched, to remove the 
bark and tow. The use of Linseed in cattle food is well 
known, and from this and the value of the fibre obtained, 
the profit of its cultivation is derived. The crop yielded 
may be 40 or 50 stones of flax and 10 or 20 bushels of 
seed. 
Lucern.— It must suffice to say that 15 lbs. of seed 
sown about the middle of April in shallow drills 12 to 14 
inches apart, on very deep loamy well-manured soil, espe- 
cially if it contain calcareous matter, will .produce a most 
valuable forage crop ; which in a mild climate will yield 
during the summer and autumn of the first year a good 
deal of capital food for cows and horses ; which it will con- 
tinue to do during the following six or seven years, if kept 
clean and occasionally tilled between the rows and ma- 
nured. 
Sainfoin is a forage crop of calcareous districts. On 
the oolite and chalk it is the best forage crop we have. 
Four, or somo sow five, bushels of the rough seed is sown 
per acre with barley or oats taken after a fallow crop which 
has thoroughly cleared the land. The crop may remain 
good for several years, and is ultimately ploughed up for 
wheat. Any patches of root weeds, being dug out first; or 
if very foul, as it often becomes, it is sometimes pared and 
burnt and sown with turnips to be fed off, and followed 
by barley and spring wheat. 
MAY. 
In this month we finish Mangold Wurzel sowing, and we prepare the land for the Turnip crop. This, with continued 
hoeing of all growing crops, and possibly folding or mowing a too luxuriant growth of wheat, is almost the entire occupation 
of the month. In Scotland May is the seed-time of the Swedish Turnip, and in England it may be sown in the latter part 
of the month. It is, however, better to delay the seed-time till June, as too early sowing results often in our hotter climate 
in premature ripeness, and consequent mildew. 
The Horse-labour in May accordingly includes all field operations in the Turnip fields, horse-hoeing Beans, Corn, Potatoes, 
Carrots, and the earlier Mangold Wurzel. 
The Hand-labour includes singling Carrots and Mangold Wurzel, Carrots and Parsnips, transplanting Cabbages and 
Kohl Rabi, and hand-weeding Flax, mowing Trifolium, Rye, &c., as fodder, and attendance on live stock. 
Mowing Luxuriant Wheat. — Our best crops at 
this time of the year completely hide the ground, owing to 
the luxuriance of their growth. This does no harm in dry 
weather, but the leaf hides not only the ground, but the 
stem of the plant, so that it is liable to become blanched, 
and to be weak and over-succulent. After a shower at this 
time of the year, when every leaf is bowing under the 
weight of rain-water, on looking towards the sun at a 
promising field of wheat you will see its light reflected 
towards you in an unbroken sheet, none of it finds access 
to the lower parts of the plants, — the leaves get it all to 
themselves, and, as a consequence, they grow luxuriantly, 
increasing in length, and breadth, and weight, until with the 
load of water which the weather somotimes lays upon them, 
they ultimately become too heavy for the weak herbaceous 
stalks below them, and the plants are laid Hat on the 
ground, to the great injury of the farmer. It is a common 
practice to sow salt over too rich land in Wheat, or at 
seed-time, under the idea that its soda will enable the ex- 
traction of the silicates of the soil, and consequently induce 
the doposit of a large quantity of silica in the straw of the 
ripened crop, which will thus be better able to stand. It 
is however certain that this process is effected, if at all, 
towards the harvest time, and that salt does little or 
nothing to remedy this liability to being laid early in the 
season. The only remedy, then, is to induce the harden- 
ing and wood-making process in the stems of [Hants. 
Now the deposit of carbon, in which this essentially con- 
sists, takes place only in the sunshine. The carbonic acid 
of the air is absorbed by leaves and decomposed in the 
sunlight, its carbon being deposited wherever the sunlight 
falls, and the oxygen being given back to the air. Any 
growth in the shado is more or less blanched ; and while 
one immediate advantage of mowing off the heavy flag of 
Wheat at this time of the year, or earlier, consists in the 
plant being at once relieved of a heavy overhanging weight 
which bears it down, the chief advantage is, that the light 
has leave to play upon the soft and succulent stem of the 
growing plant, which thus becomes carbonized and hard- 
ened, and enabled better to withstand the weather. It is 
