AFTER-CULTIVATION OF ROOTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5185, 3 November 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

AFTER-CULTIVATION OF ROOTS.

A Lincolnshire farmer once informed us that successful rape growing depended in a great measure upon the after-cultivation. Plenty of horse and hand hoeins; is indeed looked upon as essential to the production of heavy crops of turnips, even in those turnip districts where thirty to forty tons per acre do not appear mythical. Ever si ace Jethro 'full published his Horse-Hoeing Husbandry the importance of labor upon growing crops has been asserted and acted upon ; and at the present moment the subject is worthy of especial attention. Previous, as well as after cultivation, we might have said, for both are of vast importance to the success of a crop. We have lately been struck with the immense difference observable in the condition of contiguous fields. It cannot all be due to the land. We are, perhaps, driving through a fine agricultural district, and a certain square piece of some twelve or fifteen acres in extent carries a miserable stunted crop of oats or wheat. The straw stands far apart, and is "spindly," weak, and bad-colored ; charlock ond coltsfoot spread in irregular patches, and the ground appears caked and hard atop. On the opposite side ef the road is a field carrying a splendid crop of wheat, and beyond is an equally promising crop of beans, or a pasture which gives the impression of being good land.' By road or by rail, the observer of the country (for all like to know how the country is looking) must see these curious contrasts. Is it the fault of the laud or of the cultivator ? is the question which seems to require an answer. We are disponed to think it is the latter. How can land alter in regular squares with the artificial boundaries of hedges aud roads ? Here is a farm declared to be bad, always in the market, always to let. Next to it is a farm which stands high in the estimation of the neighborhood. No doubt the land upon one is better than the land upon the other ; but equally true is it that the one has been fortunate in its tenants, and the other has been the reverse. Nature abhors straight lines, and when we see a long straight hedge separating two farms, one of which carries good and the other bad crops, as a parish road marking the division between what is called a iiseful farm and a poor " starve-all" farm, depend upon it the tenants want changing. Put the good tenant on the other side of the road, and vice versa, and a few years would confer precisely opposite characters upon„the two farms. This is a long digression from the point with which we started, but it all bears upon the general subject of cultivation. To bring ourselves back to the point, we shall once more refer to the crusty, baked appearance of certain fields at this season, and contrast them with the mellow and fine surface exhibited upon others. It is the result of cultivation. The fine mellow, worked surface is a necessity for successful root cultivation. It is obtained by repeated horse hoeings and hand hoeings, and the effect of a fine surface is extraordinary. . Loose soil is intermixed with air, and air, being a bad conductor of heat, prevents soil from radiating heat at night. Loose soil is in the condition to promote capillary attraction, and hence the finer aud looser the soil, the more abundantly is water pumped up from the subsoil for the nurture of growing crops. Loose soil possesses the power of absorbing moisture from the atmosphere, and retaining it when once absorbed ; and hence a finely-worked field is, in more than one sense, able to resist a protracted drought. We remember a very knowing and equally successful farmer who always insisted upon covering his mangel and potato heap with loose soil. He would not allow battering with the spade or shovel, but ordered that the earth should lie loosely as possible. Such earth, he maintained, was much better adapted for keeping out frost than when beaten down tight with the spade. We do not doubt it, for we know that wool and feathers which lie light and open and imprison tho air, are the warmest clothing, whether by day or by night. Such is an application of the principle with relation to heat, and it would be no more difficult to make one with reference to moisture. It may, however, bo accepted that the finer and looser the surface, tho better will be the prospect of a crop. Let those who doubt ask the gardener.—Agricultural Gazette.