The culture of cabbages for cattle is a subject well meriting the attention of the agriculturist. The cabbage is subject to few diseases, and resists frost more easily than the turnip. It is palatable to cattle, and sooner fills them than carrots or potatoes ; and, in every respect but one, cabbages are superior to turnips. On all soils they require manure ; where as, on good land, turnips may be raised without it. Fifty-four tons have been raised upon an acre of ground not worth more than twelve shillings per annum. Some lands have produced sixty-eight. The time of setting them depends on their intended use. If for feeding in November, plants, procured from seed sown in the end of July in the former must be set in March or April : if for feeding in March, April, and May, they must be set in the beginning of the preceding July, from seed sown in the previous February. Repeated trans plantation may be applied to them with singular advantage. When they are of the large species, four feet by two and a half are a full distance for them. The best protection for them from the cater pillar, by which these and greens in gene ral are apt particularly to be injured, is to pull off the large under-leaves, (which may be given to cows with great benefit) on which the eggs of those insects arc usually deposited. Sowing beans among the cabbages is also considered a most effectual preventive of the nuisance.
Carrots require a deeper soil than any other root, and when the soil does not na turally extend to the depth of twelve inches, equally good throughout, it must he artificially made so for their culture, which may be easily effected by trench ploughing. Loams and sandy soils are the only ones in which they will flourish, and no dung can be used for them in the year they are sown, as it will inevitably rot them. The ground must be prepared for them by the deepest possible furrows, and, when they arc sown, about the be ginning of April, it must be smoothed by a brake. In large plots of ground, where orse-hoe ing is requisite, three feet should be the distance between the drills. Where an acre or little more only is employed, the interval should not be greater than a foot, and hand-hoeing will be found more convenient, and scarcely attended with greater expense. From six to nine hun dred bushels have been produced per acre of this root, where the land has been carefully prepared and attended to. As food for horses, its culture is rapidly spreading. For oxen, mileh cows, and pigs, carrots are admirably applicable and nourishing, and, when boiled, turkeys and other poultry are fed on them with great success.
The ease with which parsnips are cul tivated, and the greatquantity of saccha rine and nutritious matter which they contain, in which they arc scarcely ex ceeded by any vegetable whatever, ren der them well worthy of the attention of the husbandman. Though little used in Britain, they are highly esteemed in many districts of France, in some parts being thought little inferior to wheat as food for man. Cows which are fed with them
arc stated to give as much milk as they do in the months of summer. All animals eat them with avidity, and in preference to potatoes, and fatten more quickly upon them. In the cultivation of them the seed should be sown in the autumn, immcdi mtely after it is reaped. When the seed is put in at this season, the plants will an ticipate the growth of weeds in the fol lowing spring. l'rost never does them VOL 1..
any material injury. The be soil Int them is a deep, rich loam. Saud is next, suitable to them; and hi a black, gritty soil they will flourish, but not in gravel or clay. In the deepest earth they are al ways largest. In an appropriate sod no manure for them, and a very good crop has been obtained for three years in succession, without using any. The seed should be sown in drilis, at the distance of eighteen inches, for the great er convenience of hoeing ; and by a se cond hoeing and a cautious earthing, by which the leaves may not he covered, the crop will be luxuriant. In Jersey, the root has been known and cultivated for seve ral centuries, and is highly valued. It is considered as an excellent preparation for wheat, which, after parsnips, yields an abundant crop without any manure.
The profit of cultivating hemp-seed is by no means small. It requires, how ever, the besttand that can be fiauld on a farm, or which is made such by manuring. A rich, deep, putrid, and friable loam is what it particularly delights in ; and in addition to natural richness, forty cubical yards of dung per acre should be suppli ed. Besides this original cost of land in natural richness and preparation, it is to be considered that hemp returns nothing to the farm yard, while corn will give straw, and the dung hill is improved by green crops. The question concerning the propriety of its cultivation by any in dividual is not to be determined, there fore, only from the circumstance of any price in the market, but is to be from a view of all its bearings and con nections. For many crops, tillage should be given with caution. With hemp such caution is unnecessary, as its rank and luxuriant growth' proves fatal to all those weeds, by which cum would not only be injured, but destroyed. From the au tumn preceding to the time of sowing hemp, the land should be three or four times ploughed, and be well harrowed to a fine surface. The quantity of dung should be proportioned to the deficiency of the soil; and when the culture is con tinued from ycarto year, a plentiful dress ing must be every time applied. About twelve pecks should be sown per acre : and as the destruction of weeds in the till age is here no object, the broadcast me thod is universally preferable to the drill. It will be ready for pulling in August, or about thirteen weeks after it is sown.