The proper season for getting barley into the ground is March. The most useful preparation for it is by turnips. To have the land thy for sowing is of more consequence for this grain, than it is for almost any other. It should always fol low either an ameliorating crop or a fal low, and in many cases it should be fol lowed by clover. The quantity of seed barley should be increased as the season advances, as early sown crops have more time to tiller than later ones ; and in the same proportion, the importance of the drill husbandry with regard to this arti cle increases ; as, if sown in the latter end of February, in the broadcast me thod, it would get the start of weeds, which, if it be sown early in April, would extremely annoy it, according to the old mode, but by the hoeing-practice may be easily removed.
Oats should never be sown after other corn crops (as the land is by this practice too much exhausted,) and should receive the same preparation as barley: a circum stance often not sufficiently attended to. Warm, forward sands yield as great a quantity of barley as of oats, and should, therefore,'be applied to the culture of the former, as generally yielding a better price. Upon various other soils, however, the produce of oats will be in considerably greater proportion than that of barley, and by superior quantity more than com pensate for being sold at the smaller price. To relieve the business of the succeed ing months, oats may sometimes he sown in January ; without this view, however, February is preferable. The land should have been ploughed in October. Six bushels per acre may be sown in broad cast, and on poor soils even eight, to great advantage : the crop being, by thick sow ing, several days sooner ripe, and the idea of saving seed with respect to this grain not being an object worth any particular attention. In the drill husbandry five bushels per acre are sufficient, and they should be horse-hoed early in the month of May.
Peas are extremely ameliorating to the soil, and may, therefore, with very great advantage, be substituted in tillage for white corn, a succession of which is pe culiarly impoverishing. They should, however; not be sown on lands negligent ly prepared, as is too commonly done ; and indeed the be too much attended to, with respect to grain, that none should be sown but on lands in real ly good order,_, with respect to heart, cleanness from weeds, and well-finished tilth. The uncertainty generally ascribed to this crop is to be attributed in a great degree to a neglect of these circumstan ces. At the same time, however, it is not meant to be asserted, that for all grain the preparation should be equally 'high and finished. The earlier peas are sown, the better they will thrive, and the more easily they will be moved off the ground in due time for turnips, a circumstance of particular importance. February is the proper month for their being sown. Ear ly peas will seldom prove beneficial upon wet soils, and should be cultivated only on dry oncs,upon sands, dry sandy loans, gravels, and chalks. The broadcast me thod should be most clearly rejected in relation to them. The only question is between (trilling and dibbling them. On a ley, the latter practice cannot be too de cidedly adopted. Put in on a layer, they
do not want manure, which will often make them run to long straw,,a circum stance unfitvourable to podding, and like wise encourages weeds, which, in the in fant stage of the growth of peas, cannot be extirpated without danger. If the land be in good heart, therefore, as it ought to be, dung may be applied with much more advantage to other crops; and being an article for which the farmer has, perhaps in all cases, a greater de mand than he can supply, should be used with economy, and only where it is sure to answer best. The proper quantity of seeds tobe applied inthe drill-husbandry, in equally distant rows, about ,one foot asunder, is seven peeks per acre. It is a judicious and valuable observation, the result of long experience, that peas should not be sown above once in about ten years, being not found to succeed, if sown oftener.
Beans, where the land is proper for them, deserve from the farmer every at tention, constituting one of the surest funds of profit. He is enabled by them to lessen, if not absolutely explode, the practice of fallowing. When cultivated, however, with a view of substituting them in the room of fallow, drilling or dibbling must be uniformly employed, so as to ad mit the plough between their rows, as no hand-work will sufficiently pulverize the lands for the purpose, without extreme expence. Dibbling-, when well perform ed, with respect to beans, is an admirable method. The difficulty, however, of pro curing it to be well done, must be consi dered as no trifling objection to it. Beans are too often imperfectly delivered by the various drill-machines employed. On the other hand, however, the practice is less expensive than dibbling, and the seed is more surely put in to the desired depth, so that, on the whole, the drilling me thod seems preferable to that by dibbling. It is a point on which different circum stances will safely and judiciously lead to different conclusions; and soil, season, dependance upon servants, together with ether considerations, will he resorted to, previously to the decision upon either of these methods. The common little horse bean has the adv antage of being more marketable than any other. Beans thrive npon light loams heti erthan has been ge nerally imagined, The soils, however, generally applied to their culture, are all the strong and heavy ones. Wherever they can be cultivated, the farmer ought tohave them. They do not exhaust, the soil. Wheat is prepared for by then), perhaps, better than by any other mode. They preserve their upright attitude to the latest period, athnitting of horse hoeing to the very last. The ground is well shaded hy them from the sun and, if they are harvested favourably, their straw is valuable, and, at all events, may be converted into admirable dung. By a bad crop of pea.s, the land is often filled with weeds; but though a crop of beans should be extremely bad, the land may nevertheless be in the highest state of cleanness. The quantity of seed dif fers according to the variety of tbe grain. About two bushels of the horse-beans per acre, in rows equi.distaut, at eighteen inches, is a proper allowance, and Febru ary is the month in which they should be pia in.