TARES are a most important green crop in the improved systems of agriculture, especially on heavy soils, where they thrive best. When sown in autumn, with a small sprinkling of wheat or rye, they cover the ground in spring, and supply abundance of fodder in summer. A good crop of tares is fully equal in value to one of red clover : it conies off the ground in sufficient time to give the land a summer tillage, which is so useful in destroying weeds, and to allow turnips to be sown in the same season.
There are many species and varieties of tares; but that which is found the best adapted for agricultural purposes is the common tare (Vicia sativa), of which there are two principal varieties, very slightly differing in appearance, one of which is hardy, and will stand the severest winters : the other is more tender, and is therefore only sown in spring ; but it has the advantage of vegetating more rapidly, so that spring tares sown in March will be fit to cut within a fortnight or three weeks after those which were sown in autumn. By sowing them at regular intervals from September to May, a succession of green tares in perfection, that is, in bloom, or when the pods are forming, may be cut for several months, from May to October. A prudent farmer arranges his crops so that he shall have artificial green food for his horses and cattle at least six months in the year, by having tares fit to cut between the first and second cut of clover. When there are more tares than is absolutely required for this purpose, and the weather permits, they make excellent hay ; or, if the weather is not favourable, they are cut and given to sheep, which are folded on. the portion already cut. It is an advantage to have portable racks for this pur pose, that the fodder may not be trod under foot and wasted ; or the tares may be placed between hurdles, tied two and two, which form extemporaneous racks. It is prudent to raise sufficient seed for another year; but a crop of seed-tares raised for sale is seldom profitable, as they greatly exhaust the soil : and the price varies so much in different seasons, that it becomes too much of a speculation for a farmer. The difference of spring and winter tares is probably more owing to habit than to any real botanical distinction between them. When spring
tares are sown in autumn instead of winter tares, they may occasionally stand the frost, if not very severe ; but, in general, they rot on the ground and never recover ; whereas the real hardy winter tares, whose vegetation is slower, seem insensible to the severest frosts.
In the early part of summer green rye and tares, mixed, are sold at a great price in large towns for horses which have worked hard and been highly fed in winter. They act as a gentle laxative, and cool the blood : near London, where every produce is forced with an abundance of manure, tares are often fit to cut early in May, and the land is immediately ploughed and planted with potatoes, or sown with mangel wurzel or Swedish turnips, which come off in September or October, in time for wheat-sowing. Thus two very profitable crops are raised during the time that the Land, according to the old system, would have been fallow; and at the same time it is left as clean, by careful hoeing, as the best fallow would have made it.
Tares should be sown on land which is well pulverised. If after wheat, the stubble should be ploughed in with a deep furrow after a powerful *scarifier has gone over the land several times to loosen it : five or six cart-loads of good farm-yard dung should be ploughed in. The tares should be drilled or dibbled, and the surface well harrowed. The intervals should be hoed early in spring : this will accelerate the growth, and insure a complete covering of the ground. As soon as the tares show the flower, they may be cut daily till the pods are fully formed ; after this, any which remain uncut should be made into hay or given to sheep ; for if the seeds are allowed to swell, the ground will be much exhausted. Another piece should be ready to cut by this time, and thus there may be a succession of tires and broad clover from May to November. Tares may he sown as late as August, on a barley or rye stubble, for sheep-feed early in winter, or to be ploughed in to rot in the ground, where beans or peas are intended to be sown early in spring ; this is perhaps the cheapest mode of manuring the land, the only expense being the seed; for the tillage is necessary at all events.