Horse-hoeing husbandry : $b or, an essay on the principles of vegetation and tillage. Designed to introduce a new method of culture; whereby the produce of land will be increased, and the usual expence lessened. Together with accurate descriptions and cuts of the instruments employed in it.Tull, Jethro
Science
Horse-hoeing husbandry : $b or, an essay on the principles of vegetation and tillage. Designed to introduce a new method of culture; whereby the produce of land will be increased, and the usual expence lessened. Together with accurate descriptions and cuts of the instruments employed in it.
Tull, Jethro
Agriculture -- Early works to 1800; Plows; Tillage
By all these Three Methods I have had very good Crops; but as this
I now describe is the latest, and is (as it ought to be) the best;
I publish it as such, without Partiality to my own Opinions; for I
think it less dishonourable to expose my Errors, when I chance to
detect them, than to conceal them: And as I aim at nothing but Truth,
I cannot, with any Satisfaction to myself, suffer any thing of my own
knowingly to escape, that is in the lead contrary to it.
I have a Piece of Five or Six Acres of Land which I annually plant
with boiling Pease, in the very same manner as Wheat; except that the
Second Horse-hoeing (which is the last) throws the Earth so far upon
the Pease as to make the Two Rows become One. These Pease cannot be
planted until after the 25th of _March_; else Two Horse-hoeings might
not be sufficient. The same Drill that plants Wheat plants Pease; only
sometimes we change the Spindle for one that has its Notches a little
bigger.
I drill no more Barley, because ’tis not proper to be followed by a
Crop of Wheat without a Fallow; for some of the shattered Barley will
live over the Winter, and mix with the Wheat in the Rows, and can
scarce possibly be thence timely taken out, its first Stalk and Blade
being difficult to distinguish from the Wheat; and this is a great
Damage to the Sale in the Market; and for the same Reason I plant no
more Oats.
The First Hoeing is performed by turning a Furrow from the Row.
We are not so exact as to the Weather in the First Hoeing; for if the
Earth be wet, the Hoe-plough may go nearer to the Row, without burying
the Wheat; and the Frost of the Winter will pulverize that Part of
the[116] Furrow, which is to be thrown to the Wheat in the Spring,
altho’ it was hoed wet.
[116] The Word Furrow signifies the Earth that is thrown out, as well
as the Trench from whence it is thrown by the Plough.
Neither is it necessary to be very exact as to Time; but it must never
be till the Wheat has more than One Blade; and it may be soon enough,
when it has Four or Five Leaves, so that it is done before[117], or in
the Beginning of Winter.
[117] But if the Wheat is planted very late, it may not be _hoeable_
before the Winter is past; nor is there such a Necessity of hoeing
the late planted before the great Frosts are over, as there is of the
early-planted; for the later ’tis planted, the less time the Earth
has to subside, and grow hard.
_Note_, By Winter we do not mean only those Months that are properly
so reckoned, but also such other Months as have hard Frosts in them,
as _January_, _February_, and sometimes the Beginning of _March_.
The greatest Fault you can commit in Hoeing, is the First Time, when
the Furrow is turned from the Row, not to go near enough to it, nor
deep enough. You cannot then go too near it, unless you plow it out, or
bury it with Mould, and do not uncover it; nor too deep, unless you go
below the Staple of the Ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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