The Botanist's Companion, Volume II: Or an Introduction to the Knowledge of Practical Botany, and the Uses of Plants. Either Growing Wild in Great Britain, or Cultivated for the Puroses of Agriculture, Medicine, Rural Oeconomy, or the Arts — John Shaqi
The Botanist's Companion, Volume II: Or an Introduction to the Knowledge of Practical Botany, and the Uses of Plants. Either Growing Wild in Great Britain, or Cultivated for the Puroses of Agriculture, Medicine, Rural Oeconomy, or the ArtsSalisbury, William
Science
The Botanist's Companion, Volume II: Or an Introduction to the Knowledge of Practical Botany, and the Uses of Plants. Either Growing Wild in Great Britain, or Cultivated for the Puroses of Agriculture, Medicine, Rural Oeconomy, or the Arts
Salisbury, William
Plants -- Great Britain
From the experience I have had on this subject, I find their culture is
attended with certain difficulties, which arise not so much from the
nature of the plants, as from the labour requisite to this purpose,
great attention being necessary for saving Grass-seeds at the seasons
when the farmer must exert all the strength of his husbandmen to get his
other business accomplished.
The only mode by which this can be effected is by selecting a proper
soil for the kinds intended to be saved. The seeds should be drilled
into the ground at about one foot distance; and care taken that the
plants are duly weeded of all other kinds that may intrude themselves,
before they get too firm possession of the soil. The hoe should be
frequently passed between the drills, in order both to keep the land
clean and to give vigour to the young plants. The sowing may be done
either in the spring or in the month of September, which will enable the
crop to go to seed the following spring. In order to preserve a
succession of crops, it is necessary every season to keep the ground
clean all the summer months, to dig or otherwise turn up the land
between the drills early in the spring, and to be particular in the
other operations until the seeds ripen. Now this business being so
inconvenient to the farmer, it is not to be wondered at, that, wherever
attempts of this kind have been made, they should fail from want of the
necessary care as above stated, without which it is needless to
speculate in such an undertaking. There is nevertheless still an
opportunity, for any one who would give up his land and time to the
pursuit, to reap a rich and important harvest; as nothing would pay him
better, or redound more to his credit, than to get our markets regularly
supplied with select seeds of the best indigenous Grasses, so that a
proper portion of them may be used for forming pasture and meadow-land.
The above hints are not thrown out by a person who wishes to speculate
in a theory which is new, but by one who has cultivated those plants
himself both for seed and fodder, and who would readily wish to promote
their culture by stating a mode which has proved to him a profitable
pursuit, and for which he has, already, been honoured with a reward form
the Society of Arts.
The following observations are intended to embrace such kinds only as
are likely to be cultivated, with those that are distinguished for some
particular good properties; as it would be impossible within the limits
of this small memorandum to enumerate all the plants that are eaten by
cattle. The same mode shall be pursued under all the different heads in
this department.
PLANTS USEFULL IN AGRICULTURE.
SECT. I.--GRASSES.
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