104 
CARTER AN D CO.’S GARDENER’S VADE-MECUM FOR 18G2. 
crease their diameter, you bv so doing obtain a much 
greater increase of weight per acre than if by leaving 
them nearer one another, you merely increase their num- 
ber. A crop twice as thick on the ground of the same 
size would be only twice as heavy, but a crop the same 
in number, but twice as thick individually, /. c. of twice the 
diameter, would be eight times as heavy ; the bulk and 
weight increasing of course as the cube of the diameter, 
while it only increases simply in proportion to the num- 
ber, so that the room given them ought always to be such 
as shall alford full scope for the largest growth to which 
the other circumstances of the crop may lead. About 
12 inches apart is a good distance. The intervals be- 
tween the drills are first horse-hoed, or pared with a one- 
Ivorse plough, leaving abrupt ridge-lines on which the row 
of young plants is growing; and the hand-hoe, by alternate 
push and pull, bevels this abrupt ridge down, and leaves 
solitary plants along the ridge-lino at intervals of about a 
foot. This is done by women or boys, at the cost of about 
3s. or 4s. an acre. The plants are left till the surface of 
the land again cakes over by the weather, or again exhi- 
bits weeds, and then it again requires a horse-hoeing or 
hand-hoeing. A deeper stirring than the former horse- 
hoeing is then given, and in a few weeks repeated, when 
the leaves should meet in the drills. This they will do 
early in August in Scotland, and perhaps not till Sep- 
tember in the South. And it may before this have ex- 
hibited signs of mildew, which is generally prevented 
by avoiding too early sowing, and adopting everything, 
whether of the nature of tillage or manure, which shall 
conduce to the persistent vigour of the growth. Even 
then the crop is liable to residt in worthless produce, 
owing to the disease called finger and toe, generally the 
result of the absence of lime from the soil. It consists 
in a forked stunted growth, covered with warty excres- 
cences, in which ultimately grubs and rottenness appear. 
To diminish the frequency of the crop on the land, to 
apply lime, and to use every other means of securing 
rapid and luxuriant growth, is the way to reduce the 
chance of attack by this disease to a minimum. 
The liability to this disease, or at least to that dege- 
nerate form of the root, which is one feature of it, is in- 
creased by the use of carelessly grown seed. If, as lias 
been already said, Swedes are sown late in the year, and 
left a small and ill-formed growth over Winter where 
they grew, and the seed be reaped next year and sown for 
the following crop, it is more likely to yield a forked 
stunted crop than if the seed-crop had been sown in May, 
attained its full growth, been pulled and pitted, and after- 
wards selected and transplanted and perfectly cultivated, 
yielding seed which carries in it a tendency to reproduce 
the well-formed roots from which it sprung. 
When the crop is ripe, it is left there and folded ovor 
with sheep, or it is hall carried home to the yards, the re- 
mainder only being consumed upon the ground, or it is 
w holly pitted on the ground and consumed there by sheep 
folded later in the season ; or it may be wholly carried 
home to pits for consumption by cattle in boxes, and 
stalls, and yards. The cost of pulling Swedes and Man- 
gold Wurzel varies from G$. to 10s. per acre, including 
for that sum the labour of cutting oil* the tops and filling 
the roots into the carts. They are either pitted in long 
ridge-like heaps on the ground, and covered over with 
straw and earth, or they may bo placed between parallel 
row’s of hurdles, eight or nine feet apart, and thatched 
over ; another double row of hurdles being placed about 
I a foot from the first, and treated in like manner, and the 
intervals stuffed with straw, and the heaps roughly thatched 
over, the bushy eaves of the thatching interlocking over 
the intervals. The three groat requisites of ventilation, 
warmth, and dryness are thus sufficiently secured. 
There are many other methods of Turnip culture be- 
sides the one described. It is more common in England to 
sow the seed in drills 18 inches apart on the fiat, the 
land having boon first cultivated and manured either in 
Autumn,' or partly in Autumn and Spring. This is a 
sufficient width for a less perfect horse-hoeing, and in dry 
seasons it is perhaps preferable as being a less exposure of 
the soil to drought. And it is becoming more and more 
common to put in the seed with the water-drill, which 
deposits both manure and seed in a manner calculated to 
induce immediate and rapid growth — an apparatus for 
throwing liquid manure at a constant rate, or mere water 
containing superphosphate, or guano half dissolved and 
half suspended, though it is conjoined to a common 
Turnip drill, so that the mixture is thrown down in rows 
upon the land as the drill is drawn over it. It is also 
more and more common in England to depend on super- 
phosphate and lime-dust alone, or with ashes, for a crop 
of Turnips, applying almost all the farm manure on the 
Clover-stubbles for the Wheat-crop. 
In Scotland, on the other hand, it is preferred not only 
to apply farm-yard dung, in itself a nitrogenous manure, 
almost exclusively to green crops, but they even prefer 
guano, a still more nitrogenous manure, as an adjunct, 
. instead of the superphosphate. It is also common in Eng- 
land to sow Turnips broadcast on the land, which, at best, 
is a careless method of Turnip culture, and only defensible 
in the case of Stubble Turnips, where a crop, partly of 
bulbs and partly of greens, is available in Spring for Ewes 
and Lambs. The different sorts of Turnips vary a good 
deal In the proportion of water which they severally con- 
tain, and still more, therefore, in the residual proportion 
of dry matter in their substance, on which almost alone, 
of course, their relative nutritivencss depends. This va- 
riety hinges not only on sort, but still more on weather, 
and the other circumstances of growth. And the proper 
manuring of the Turnip-crop, in order to obtain a healthy 
growth, is therefore of importance. 
Mr. Nesbit declared before the London Farmers’ Club 
that he had ridden through a crop, his horse stumbling 
over hard and firm roots, during one-half the field, and 
going smash through, almost constantly rotten bulbs over 
the rest of the field ; and the line separating the two was 
where the superphosphate made from bones used in one- 
half the field was separated from the superphosphate made 
from coprolites used on the rest of the field. The former 
contained all the other ingredients needed by the growing 
plant, the latter resulted indeed in a rapid and stimu- 
lated, but unhealthy, because imperfect growth. And it is 
very possible that a lopsided manuring, as it may be 
called, one in which all the elements wanted are not evenly 
supplied, may be productive of that unhealthy growth to 
which Mr. Nesbit referred. The influence of climate on 
the crop is a more obvious thing still. The slower and 
more continuous growth of the crops in Scotland results 
in the production of something very different from an 
English Turnip. The latter is useless as food soon after 
the beginning of the New Year, while the later remain 
good till late in Spring. 
JULY. 
The work this month, excepting the continuance of turnip culture and the horse-hoeing of root crops, is more on the 
pastures and clovers than on the arable land. Haymaking, with perhaps the earliest of the corn harvest, in the shape of 
pea and bean cutting, occupy the hands. 
The Horse-labour is thus lighter in July than in any other month of the year. It includes repeated horse-hoeing of the 
different green crops. Sowing of wheat may be called “ stolen ” crops, i. e. after Vetches, Rye, Italian Rye-grass, and other 
