144 
Some Minor Farm Crops. 
6 or 8 ft. high seem also to be distinct types, differing from 
the others in general appearance, in carrying a coarser bast 
fibre and in exhibiting an irregular habit of growth. 
Hemp is nearly related to the hop and also to the nettle ; it 
is a dioecious species, the male and female characters appearing 
on separate individual plants. The male plant comes first to 
maturity, the female plant growing to a greater height and 
arriving at its maximum development some four or five weeks 
later than the male. 
The best soil for hemp is a deep rich loam containing a 
good proportion of sand, so that it will keep open and work 
freely ; land such as may be found extending over a large part 
of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk being eminently 
suited to the crop. Although hemp does best in somewhat 
sheltered and moist situations — such for example as occur in 
the vicinity of rivers and streams — it does not thrive where 
the land is wet. It is considered a good plan to sow hemp on 
newly broken pasture and on warped areas. The most 
important factor in hemp cultivation, however, is to have the 
soil deeply worked, a fine tilth being very necessary ; indeed, 
it is claimed by many to be useless to sow hemp at ail on land 
which is not in a very high state of cultivation. These 
conditions are obtained usually by ploughing the land in the 
autumn, cross ploughing it in the spring, and then by harrowing 
and lightly rolling it during the month of April as weather 
permits ; in this way the land is brought into condition just 
prior to sowing. A liberal dressing of old farmyard manure is 
given in the autumn, and, because the land cannot be too much 
enriched, phosphates and potash are frequently added in the 
spring. 
It was formerly the custom for the grower to reserve a 
particular field of some five or six acres for hemp, an instance 
being recorded by Arthur Young, in his “ Agricultural Survey 
of Suffolk ” in 1797, of a field upon which hemp had been 
grown for seventy years in succession. This custom has long 
since been discontinued, and hemp now finds a place in the 
ordinary crop rotations. Unless the land is exceptionally rich 
any corn crop may be sown after hemp, although oats do best 
as they make less straw than wheat, and owing to the shade 
afforded by the hemp crop the land is not greatly troubled with 
weeds so that the following crop is at an advantage from this 
fact alone. In some districts — notably in Suffolk — the rotation 
followed has been wheat after fallow followed by sown grasses, 
hemp, and then oats ; or the manured fallow was followed by 
w 7 heat, grasses, oats, and hemp. At the present time hemp is 
grown in Cambridgeshire where very good crops are obtained 
on the rich alluvial soil between Ely and Downham Market 
