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THE QUALITY OF BARLEY GROWN AFTER 
ROOTS. 
Barley grown after swedes or turnips that are consumed 
by sheep folded on the land is generally of inferior quality 
and rarely makes a good malting sample, and yet probably 
more barley is grown upon this tilth, as in the typical four 
course rotation, than upon any other. If we look down the 
records of the Brewers’ Exhibition we almost always find 
that the prize-winning barleys have been grown after wheat, 
after clover, or as the second barley crop after roots. 
For this inferiority of barley taken after roots there are 
several reasons. In the first place the tilth is rarely good 
or uniform ; in some places the land is much poached because 
there happened to fall a spell of wet weather when the fold 
was on that spot: some parts may have been folded a month 
or two back, in others the plough immediately follows the 
fold; secondly, the seeding is generally late, the sheep can 
rarely be got off the land, and a seed-bed prepared before the 
middle or end of March, and a February seeding is necessary 
for first-class barley. A third cause is the large quantity of 
rapidly acting manure that is left in the soil by the sheep. 
If we take the Rothamsted figures for an average crop of 
14 tons per acre of swedes and 2 tons of leaves, we find the 
crop contains, per acre, 98 lbs. of nitrogen, 22 lbs. of phos- 
phoric acid, and 80 lbs. of potash, of which the sheep will 
only retain 7, 4, and 5 lbs. respectively, returning to the soil 
gt lbs. of nitrogen, 18 lbs. of phosphoric acid, and 79’5 lbs. of 
potash. This is a large amount of manurial material, 
roughly equivalent to a dressing of 600 lbs. nitrate of soda, 
170 lbs. of superphosphate, and 600 lbs. of kainit; it is also 
