CARTER AND CO.’S GARDENER’S VADE-MECUM FOR 1862. 
107 
into the market according to the prices which may obtain 
from week to week. 
One more aspect in which these crops are related to one 
another exists in the diseases to which they are severally 
liable. Wheat almost alone, however, of them, is washed 
and pickled, as they call it, before seed-time; but they are 
all liable to injury from the disease against which this 
pickling is directed. 
Smut or blacks more especially is common to all alike ; 
it is the result of a fungus named Uredo segetum, which 
results in the conversion of the whole floret into a mass of 
sooty dust, which is dissipated generally before the harvest 
by the wind, so that the sample is not injured by it. Bunt, 
on the other hand, produced by another Uredo, results in a 
swollen discoloured seed, which is not necessarily broken 
by the thrashing, and so, sometimes, finds a flaw in the 
sample. On the kernel being broken, it is found to be full 
of a blttck stinking powder, which, if it gets between the 
mill-stones, spoils the flour, and so its appearance in the corn 
is more injurious than that of smut. It -can be perfectly 
prevented by carefully washing the seed, so as to detach 
or destroy the germs of the fungus, which, adhering to the 
grain and sown along with it, become absorbed during 
its growth, bearing their mischievous fruit at harvest' time. 
It is better, for this washing, to use a material of a some- 
what caustic character, wliich shall thus more easily and 
completely detach and destroy these spores and germs with- 
out the labour of washing. A solution of blue vitriol, lb. 
to a gallon of water, thrown on a sack of wheat on the floor, 
will, on properly mixing the grain, wet the surface of every 
separate corn, and thus completely prevent all chance of 
the crop being affected by the bunt. This is the simplest 
pickle that is used. To float the grain in salt and water, 
and afterwards dry it with quick-lime, is not so easy nor 
so effectual, though it is still a common mode of treatment. 
SEPTEMBER. 
Harvest work continues, and is generally completed in Southern -England, only commencing however, very often, in some 
parts of the North. The grain is thatched as soon as it is in the rick. When harvest is over early, stubbles may be 
pared and burned, lime hauled on to Clover or stubbles to be ploughed in, fallow operations pursued, dung hauled out for 
spring green crops ; Rye and Winter Vetches and Trifolium may be sown. This too is the best month for sowing Italian 
Rye Grass, and Wheat sowing may be commenced. 
The Horse-labour , therefore, includes plenty of ploughing and cartage ; and no month is more laborious in good seasons, 
when autumn cultivation is possible. 
The Hand-labour , too, is laborious enough in harvest work, and in the fallow operations connected with the clearing of 
stubbles. 
Italian Rye-grass. — Though it may be grown as a 
stolen crop to be mown once and its stubble then ploughed 
up for Turnips, or even as a green crop to be ploughed 
under for manure, or as a part of the ordinary seeding of 
grass land in rotation, or ns a part of the seed to be used 
in laying down permanent pasture, it deserves description, 
as being a crop lit for cultivation by itself, yielding, after 
an autumnal sowing, as many as lour or five cuttings in 
the following year of forage, which, if the land be rich and 
abundantly manured between the dressings, is of unequalled 
quality as food for stock. The land should be well tilled 
and manured, and three or four bushels of seed may be sown 
broadcast in September ; and if three or four pounds of 
Trifolium inearnatum or White Clover are sown along 
with it, the crop is better worth cutting next year. There is 
no crop which will make such full use of whatever manure 
you may choose to apply. It covers the ground before 
winter, and comes to early maturity next spring. If kept 
well mown down as it attains sufficient head, it may be 
kept another year upon the land, yielding tliree or four 
cuttings. The rapid extension of its growth during the 
past few years is evidenced by the quantity of seed imported, 
which reaches now upwards of 40,000 bushels annually, 
whereas in 1830 only 160 bushels were introduced. The 
price then was 42.s. a bushel, and now it is about 5s. or 6s., 
varying of course from year to year. 
Italian Rye-grass prefers the adhesive class of soils, loams 
and clays. When sown alone, three to four bushels per acre 
of seed are used ; in mixtures for permanent pasture, six 
or eight lbs. per acre are enough. When sown with clovers, 
one bushel per acre and twelve lbs. of mixed clover seeds 
suffice. The seed varies in weight, from fifteen lbs. up to 
as much as twenty-eight to thirty lbs. per bushel. The 
produce varies from six or seven up to sixteen or seventeen 
tons per acre for each cutting, according to the liberality, of 
its treatment ; and from two to five cuttings may be had a 
year, according to weather, dressings, irrigation, &e. When 
liquid manure is washed over the land after each cutting, 
or three or tour cwt. of guano or sulphate of ammonia are 
spread broadcast and then washed in, the largest produce 
is obtained ; and in Ayrshire several farms exist, where 
this method has been adopted with the most extraordinary 
results as to yield, though with what results as to profit is 
doubtful. 
The following is the history of an acre of such land so 
treated : — Four bushels of the Rye-grass seed are sown in 
September and brushed in and watered and left till spring. 
Its first cutting may be in May, when ten or twelve tons of 
green fodder are obtained from it, and the land is im- 
mediately dressed with three or four cwt. of mixed guano 
and sulphate of ammonia, and washed in with (one inch 
deep) 100 tons of water from the tank into wliich the 
Bell’s or Burgess’s, leaves the corn in swathes upon the land, 
and in that of Dray, Cuthbert, Gardner, Wood, and many 
others, leaves it in rather roughish bundles, to be gathered 
up and tied in sheaves. In all cases the corn should be 
cut and tied when dry ; and this, in the case of most of 
those machines which have no side delivery, or one not far 
enough to move the corn out of the way of the horses oil 
their next bout round the crop, needs to be done at once. 
Two horses (or a changed pair) may thus cut from 8 to 12 
acres a day, and save the labour of 8 to 12 men. 
The cost does not exceed from 5s. to Is. an acre, 1 instead 
of from 8s. to 12s. or 14s., which is the more common ex- 
perience in the case of hand labour ; and in every case a 
portion at any rate of the work should be done by contract, 
so as to make it the interest of the men to hurry on as fast 
as possible. The work of carrying away should in any case 
be done by contract. One man pitching to cart or waggon 
in the field, one lad building there, and one man pitching 
from the carriage to the rick, may form a party, and their 
share of the whole work may bo let for from 10 d. to Is. per 
acre. Three carts, and two boys to lead them, and one man 
and a boy on the rick to build ; the day labourers paid in 
addition by the farmer, who, with these tluee contract men, 
form a complete harvest party for the carriage and build- 
ing of the corn ; and a portion of the whole being thus let 
by the piece, drives the whole along with the force of self- 
interest. 
The thrashing of the several crops is another operation, 
alike for all. Thrashing by machine may cost from 1 \d. to 
2d. per bushel, and by the flail from 2d. to 4 d. per bushel, 
according to the sort and its yield. The cost of grain culti- 
vation is considerably reduced by the improved means of 
realizing the produce wliich reaping machines and thrash- 
ing machines have furnished ; but the chief value of the 
latter is in their enabling an immediate turning of the crops 
ii 2 
