Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
An acre and a half of this piece was _transplanted_ on four-feet
ridges 30th July. About half an acre across the middle of the field was
sown _broad-cast_ 14th April.--In the thirteen-acre field there is about
half an acre sown _broad-cast_ on the 1st of June; the rest of the field
was _transplanted_; part in the first week of June, part in the last
week of June, part from the 12th to 18th July, and the rest (about three
acres) from 21st to 23rd July. The drilled Swedes in the seventeen-acre
field, contain full 23 tons to the acre; the transplanted ones in _that_
field, 15 tons, and the broad-cast not exceeding 10 tons. Those in the
thirteen-acre field which were transplanted before the 21st July,
contain 27 if not 30 tons; and the rest of _that_ field about 17 tons to
the acre. The broad-cast piece here (half an acre) may contain 7 tons.
The shortness of my time will prevent us from ascertaining the weight by
actual weighings; but such is the crop, according to the best of my
judgment, after a very minute survey of it in every part of each
field.--NOW, here is a little short of 800 tons of food, about a fifth
part of which consists of _tops_; and, of course, there is about 640
tons of _bulb_. As to the _value_ and _uses_ of this prodigious crop I
need say nothing; and as to the time and manner of sowing and raising
the plants for transplanting, the act of transplanting, and the after
cultivation, Mr. PALMER has followed the directions contained in my
"_Year's Residence in America_;" and, indeed, he is forward to
acknowledge that he had never thought of this mode of culture, which he
has followed now for three years, and which he has found so
advantageous, until he read that work, a work which the _Farmer's
Journal_ thought proper to treat as a _romance_.--Mr. PALMER has had
some _cabbages_ of the large, drum-head kind. He had about three acres,
in rows at four feet apart, and at little less than three feet apart in
the rows, making _ten thousand_ cabbages on the three acres. He kept
ninety-five wethers and ninety-six ewes (large fatting sheep) upon them
for _five weeks_ all but two days, ending in the first week of November.
The sheep, which are now feeding off yellow turnips in an adjoining part
of the same field, come back over the cabbage-ground and _scoop out the
stumps_ almost to the ground in many cases. This ground is going to be
ploughed for wheat immediately. Cabbages are a very fine _autumn crop_;
but it is the _Swedes_ on which you must rely for the spring, and on
_housed_ or _stacked_ Swedes too; for they will _rot_ in many of our
winters, if left in the ground. I have had them rot myself, and I saw,
in March 1820, hundreds of acres rotten in Warwickshire and
Northamptonshire. Mr. PALMER greatly prefers the _transplanting_ to the
drilling. It has numerous advantages over the drilling; greater
regularity of crop, greater certainty, the only _sure_ way of avoiding
the _fly_, greater crop, admitting of two months later preparation of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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