The Daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1845-1850, 1850-06-19
CULTIVATION AND VALUE OF TURNIPs.


CULTIVATION AND VALUE OF TURNIPs.
No such malady as has prevailed among potatoes,
has ever yet assailed the turnip 1t is indeed sub
Ject to insect ravages, but these open and palpa
BILE, and can be detected early in the season, that
means may be taken for riding the plant of them;
and if Intellectual, the crop may be ploughed in, and
something else done with the land the same year.
But the labor of growing an of turnps is less
than one OF potatoes or of corn, and the produce Is
double. went on to an half acre Of land which
had been poughed, with one hand with me, on the
10Th Of last May. With the horse, and cultivator
spread wide, and enc tooth only on each side, we
furrowed the land, sowed the seed by hand land COW
cred 1t with common hay rake, using sometimes
the teeth and sometimes the head, in little more than
halt day. To have planted with potatoes must
have taken longer With a seed sower it could
have been done quicker, and probably better. l
have stated the fact, however, so that none may be
deferred from raising root crops account Of the la
bor As to the subsequent labor, the ploughihg be-
tween the rows is the same as among potatoes, of
course-thlning and transplanting extra, it is
true but if very thick you obtain some fodder or if
the plants be lef on the ground, some manure The
hoeing is about the same as hoeing other crops,-
and in harvesting, by help of the plough along
side of the rows, is obvious that the same quanti-
ty could be gathered, in far less time. have refer
red to the French turnp in the above remarks,--a
name, however, which has almost entirely disap-
peared from the books and agricultural papers, Swed-
lsh turnips being almost the only thing of the kind
now talked of.
They suffer less from frost. Turnips can be left
safely In the ground till all other crops gathered
in The ground may freeze quite hard without seri-
Gus injury to the crops and then they may be kept in
cellar entirely too cold for any other other roots
how lofo in Ia !
The English turnip grows corky, but the French and
Swedish do not.
Swine ,oiH grow and fatten on them. Judge
Bue said that his neighbor Bement, of Albany kept
twenty hogs, mostly full grown breeders, from the
lst OF November to the 18th of February, in the
winter of 1888 and 80, upon rutabaga and buck
wheat bran, giving them six bushels of roots and one
of bran each day, at three feedings-two of the
feelings being raw roots and one on boiled
"When he began to feed with the roots, the hogs
were low In flesh; at the termination of the three
and half months, they were too thrifty for breed
ing, and some of them fit for the butcher The
owner estimated that four quarts of to each hog
per day, for all that time would not haye brought
them into better condition than did the turnips and
bran.' The corn, at seventy cents per bushel,
would be worth one dollar and seventy-fve cents
per day. The six bushels of roots, at twenty-fv
cents per bushe would be worth but one dollar and
fifty cents. The bushel of bran would cost but
trihe, of course. But suppose the expense were
equal. An acre of turnps does but moderately well
when it produces 600 bushels to the acre this
would be equal to 100 bushels of corn, which is an
amount that few fields in Massachusetts ever pro-
duce.
! Neat Cattle do aceH on turnips Gov. Hill tried
it in the winter of 1889. He gave his oxen turnips
once day, cutting them with his own hands; and
he says that with the and of the coarsest interval
hay, they worked nearly every week day, and con-
tlnued to thrive and cows fed with the same and
corn butts and oat straw, yielding milk abundantIy
much more, says he than if fed on the best hay.
The objection that the milk tastes of the turnp is
not well founded; it will taste if the cows eat the
tops; and will the beef of the animal that feeds
on tops but the most abundant feeding of the root
itself communicates no dsagreeable flavor but con-
tributes to the flesh of the one and the milk Of the
other.
Neat cattle and sheep have trebled in England
since the culture of the turnp crop commenced, ,
about fifty years ago. And the increase is attribut-
ed by writers the subject almost wholly, if not
entirely, to the urnp culture "Engish agriculture
has been revolutonized by ito Mr. Webster saw
these fields of turnps, of three, four and FIVE hundred
acres.
The great extent of the turnip culture in Scotland.
4 Is evidence that such crops cannot be unsuited to
Massachusetts, as the climate there resembles ours
more than the English does.
Manure. Any manure also will answer for the
French OF Swedish turnip. Upon the half acre re-
terred to, which is island in Essex river spread
rockwell and other sea stuff, such as is washed up
by the tide. This was the only kind of manure
that had for previous years been used Probably the
plants derived their support from the rotten manure
Of the last year.
Quantity Of Seed One pound of good is sufi-
clent for an acre. This will cost at the seed store
about seventy-five cents.
Preparation Of the soil. If the soil has dog grass
In 1t, the rows should be made across furrows-that
IS should run across the burrows made in ploughinp
the held, and these rows should be made, not with
cultvator teeth, but with pair of oxen or horses,
and plough large enough to go through the dog
grass turf, and then mellow soil hoed in to fill these
cross burrows, SO that the plants may have free soil
to work in. And one excellent effect Of a French
turnip crop upon dog grass is to shade, and smoth
er, and extirpate that foul weed.
Since the potatoe has been suffering from the in
scrntable disease which has prevailed SO fearfally,
French turnips have come in as toIerabe subsii-
tute for the table, farmer in Essex, who raised
nam hia