TURNIPS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 1 February 1913, Page 4

TURNIPS.

The turnip is a hardy biennial; its root is hard and woody in the wild state, but cultivation has converted it into the useful vegetable it is, though bad cultivation and unsuitable con ditions allow it to revert at once to its cultivated state. Turnips depend mainly upon an abundant supply of manure and water. Turnips are sown in Scotland 011 one-seventh of the total arable area, and arc sown 011 light and strong land, on thin land and 011 deep, 011 every kind of arable farm. No matter what may be its climatic aspect, .soil, or situation, turnips are sown. It is an expensive and precarious crop, subject to insectattacks, to fingor-and-toe, to drought, frost, mildew, etc. Denmark, for example, grows only 1 acre of turnips, mangels, kohl rabi, and other, root crops for every five acres of corn, and yet Denmark i,s not a grain-growing country. If turnips are not grown, how is the fertility of the soil to be. maintained? Denmark gives the answer : Will ere we ihave 7,000 or 8,000 acres of tares, Denmark has nine times as much. If, instead of growing 8 or TO tons of roots which only give 1 ton of feeding-material, a mixture of tares, peas, beans, and oats wore grown for summer feeding, and the pasture that would be grassed were made into hay for winter feed, how imidh more stock could be kept! Tho land would improve in condition, as turnips scourge it, while tho tares, peas, beans, etc., would enrich' it -and' keep it from weeds,—Dundee Advertiser.