circumstances of soil, and with a view to feeding 
off the crop on the field, be the best, on the sup- 
position, however, that the manure is of such a 
nature as can be scattered by hand over the en- 
tire surface, or deposited with the drill imple- 
ment.” 
The After-Culture of Turnips.—The proper 
management of a turnip crop, from the time of 
sowing till the time of maturity, consists in 
thinning or “singling” the plants to the proper 
distances, and in a series of operations for de- 
stroying weeds and stirring the soil; and, though 
somewhat modified by differences in the variety 
of the turnip, in the character of the soil, and in 
the method of sowing, it is always the same in 
principle, and may be sufficiently exemplified in 
all cases by the usual details of it in the case of 
ridge-sown hybrids. 
When the plants acquire the rough leaf, or are 
about two inches high, or begin to be incom- 
moded by weeds, or about three weeks after 
sowing, the process of hoeing commences. The 
first hoeing is done either by a small one-horse 
plough going and returning along the hollow of 
each ridge, and cutting off a slice of earth from 
the sides as near as possible to the turnips, or, 
more conveniently, by a horse-hoe with lateral 
coulters passing once along each interval. A 
few days after this operation, the hand-hoers go 
to work, each having a little iron hoe, fixed upon 
a wooden handle about 3 feet in length; and, 
standing in the hollow with their faces to the 
ridges, they so hoe the turnip-plants as to leave 
them standing singly at the distance from each 
other of from 8 to12 inches. By this operation, 
the rows of the turnips are cleaned of all weeds,— 
the superfluous plants cut up, and pushed into the 
intervals, where they die,—and the plants to be 
preserved left standing singly at the distance re- 
quired. Soon after, weeds will again sprout up in 
the intervals of the ridges and amongst the plants ; 
so that in the course of 12 days or more, the 
horse-hoe again passes through the intervals of 
the ridges, cutting up all the weeds that may 
have sprung up; and soon after the hand-hoers 
again go to work with the same instrument as 
before, cutting up all weeds which may have 
grown amongst the turnips, and carefully singling 
any plants that may by chance have been omitted 
in the first hoeing. Sometimes the horse-hoe, 
after a short period, passes once more down the 
intervals; but more generally, the second hand- 
hoeing concludes the process upon all the drier 
lands, the weeds being thenceforth kept down by 
the rapid growth of the plant, and by the over- 
shadowing of the intervals with its leaves. In 
many instances, however, at an interval of 8 or 
10 days after the last hand or horse hoeing, the 
earth which had been taken from the roots of 
the plants by these several hoeings, is again laid 
back, either by the small one-horse plough or by 
the double mould-board plough passing down 
the intervals of the rows, and ridging up the | 
TURNIP. o2] 
earth. The design in this operation is, that any 
weeds which remain in the intervals, after the 
former hoeings, may be destroyed, and that the 
land and turnips may be kept more dry during 
wet weather and the months of winter. The 
plants now grow rapidly without farther care; 
and, by the beginning of September, the leaves 
of a good crop will have covered the entire sur- 
face. 
The most important variations in the modifi- 
cations of after-culture adapted to other cases of — 
turnip-crop than ridge-sown hybrids, concern 
the distance left between the plants in the ope- 
ration of singling. And in the case of swedes on 
good land, this distance ought not to be less than 
from 12 to 15 inches,—while, in the case of most 
common turnips, upon almost any kind of land, 
it ought not to be more than from 6 to 10 inches ; 
for swedes of large size contain greater nourish- 
ment, weight for weight, than swedes of small 
size,—while most kinds of common turnips of 
large size contain, weight for weight, less nour- 
ishment than the same kinds of small size. “As 
regards the quality of the land, too, it appears 
that Nature, in destining these two varieties of 
turnip to be better adapted for two distinct va- 
rieties of soils, has also ordained that each soil 
will be respectively benefitted by that crop which 
it is calculated to grow to the greatest perfection 
than by that of an opposite character. Thus it 
is that Swedish turnips, grown on a heavy soil, 
at considerable distances asunder, will admit of 
applying a superior tilth, together with a free 
action of atmospheric and solar influence on all 
the vacant spaces, thereby effecting all the good 
that could be expected from a naked fallow with- 
out being alloyed by any of its evils; whereas an 
open or porous soil, being that best adapted for 
rough-leaved turnips, will, by such a crop being 
suffered to grow thick, possess those advantages 
which it stands so much in need of, namely, a 
shade from a scorching sun, tending thereby to 
assist the secretions of the crop, and add to the 
vegetable staple of the soil.” 
The Consumption of Turnips.—A common me- 
thod of consuming turnips is to have them eaten 
off by sheep. In this case, the turnips are either 
pulled up by hand, and carried away, as wanted, 
into the fields in which the sheep are kept, and 
there spread regularly on the ground; or, more 
frequently and economically, they are consumed 
on the field where they have grown, by folding 
the sheep upon it, and allowing them to eat the 
plants on the spot. See the articles Fonp, Hur- 
pin, and Surxp. One method of feeding off on 
the spot, is to allow as much of the turnips as 
the sheep can reach to be eaten just as they 
stand, and afterwards to pick up the “shells” or 
bottoms of the roots with a pronged hoe; and 
another is to allow them to eat only the tops as 
they stand, and then to take up the roots and 
slice them into pieces, by means of some one or 
other of the implements noticed in our article 
