The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-09-01
THE FARM AND THE GARDEN.
MATTERS OF INTEREST To AGRI-
CULTURALIST AND HOUSEWIFE.

How to Grow Great Crops of Tur-
nips-EnrIy Potatoes for MILK
Cows and CaIves-The Grape an
Early Grown Fruit-The Mexican
Boil WeeNil.
A great many farmers and others
SOW turnips every year. but there is
not one in fifty who knows how to
grow really large crops of this valuable
root. 1t is a valuable root considering
the fact that it can be grown toward
the close of the year when few other
crops of value can be grown. Ton for
ton the turnip is not near so valuable
as sugar beet or artichoke or sweet
potatoes, as food for cattle and hogs
But with all its 80 per cent. of water
it is well worth growing on any farm
and also in any garden, for it is a de-
sirable food, especially for the poor.
Many rich are not averse to a we'll
served dish of pork and turnips.
No good farmer should be satisfied
with a crop of less than 500 bushels
to the acre. Rich land should yield a
thousand bushels from first to last.
If it were possible to have land so
clean that no spontaneous growth
would spring up to share the soil with
the sown crop we should always sow
rurnips broadcast, using three to four
pounds of seeds of six to eight of the
best Varieties mixed together. Sowing
in July If rutabaga, in Jine) and
rolling the soil after broadcasting
ton of good fertilizer per acre. Thus
treated, it will not be difficult to make
anywhere from six TO twelve hundred
bushels per acre.
AS our soils are fully stocked with
various weed and grass seeds it is
much better, as a rule, to SOW in drills
so that the crop can be cultivated at
least twice The rows should be 16
to IS inches apart and the
mixed seeds sown evenly and not too
thickly along in the shallowest of
drills This sowing should be made
about the 18th of July if the season
permits. A roller run along the drills
will do to cover and to press the soil
to the seeds. Do not be in hurry
to thin out before the 10th of August.
Then thin to inches.
The following is a good mixture of
seeds: White rutabaga, yellow ruta-
baga, yellow Aberdeen, globe, cow
horn, flat Dutch and Kashmere.
Some of these are much earlier than
others and can be pulled out and
used or sold several weeks before 9TH
ers are even half grown. While we
have suggested thinning out to five
inches our own plan has been for
many years not to thin out at all ex-
cept some rows that had been sown
thicker so as to provide salad for sew
eral weeks. If the seeds are tested
before sowing and care taken to sow
thinly there is very little need for thin
ming. The land being highly fortified
as many as six good-sized, merchant
able turnips were developed for each
running foot with one rutabaga to
about every eighteen inches in adj
dition thereto.
A careful lookout is kept for the
Fly" and f1eabeetles. A quantity of
dry ashes or clay dust, tainted with
kerosine oil and to which is added
also a small proportion of fly powder
is kept ready TO hand and soon after
the turnips are up they are busted
with the remedy-doing it early in the
morning when the dew is on.
Years ago we found that a cowhorn.
a fiat Dutch and a rutabaga turnip
could easily be grown in the same
space usually allotted to a rutabaga,
and then we began growing turnips
as they should be grown, "a crop that
was a crop" 1t pays to have a nice
seed bed for turnip. That is finely
pulverized. Deep blowing is not at all
essential.
To insure a stand and prompt growth
in July-August the roller is indispen-
sible in seeding. OF course a very good
crop of turnips can be made by sowing
during September, but not such as are
grown from July sowings. S. A. C.