ON THE CULTURE OF TURNIPS.
Turnips for fall and winter use are generally sown in the last of July. I have been long apprehensive that this sowing was too early. The weather at this season of the year is generally very hot and very dry; and drought has a direct tendency to dwarf and spoil a field of young turnips; the black fly, also, a natural enemy of the turnip, is at this period very voracious, and the crop is too often destroyed, or rendered unprofitable from one or the other of these causes.
With a view to remedy these evils, I sowed my turnips two seasons ago, very late in August. My neighbours laughed at me, and said I would not have a single mess. I had, however, more and better turnips than any of them. Encouraged by the success, I sowed the last year, on the 25th of August, a small piece of ground, eight rods only, with turnips. They came up well, and not a fly touched them. When they had four or five leaves I directed one of my men to weed and thin them, so as to have them stand eight or ten inches apart. The ground afterwards was slightly stirred with a garden hoe. The leaves grew rapidly, covered the ground, and prevented the further growth of weeds. On the 11th of November, I pulled the turnips, trimmed and measured them, and had on the eight rods of ground, (the twentieth part of one acre only,) forty-five bushels of as large and well formed turnips as I ever saw. This produce is at the rate of nine hundred bushels to the acre. The soil is a sandy loam, in good heart, but by no means in high tilth.
I sowed two other small pieces of ground, the one on the 1st, and the other on the 8th of September. Neither of these yielded like the one sowed on the 25th August; but each of them produced much larger and better turnips, than I have seen, that were sowed at the usual time.
I attribute my success altogether to the late sowing; the heat is then less intense, the rains more frequent, the dews more copious, the fly harmless, and the crop abundant.
I would earnestly recommend to the farmers to set apart a small piece of ground, and try the experiment of late sowing, and I am confident they will be amply compensated for making the attempt, by a greater increase of crops.
[Connecticut Courant.