[11] A new variety called the Bassano has been recently introduced into France, and extensively cultivated; and it is said to be found in all the markets from Venice to Genoa, in the month of June. It is remarkable for the form of the root, which is flattened like a turnip. The skin is red, the flesh white, veined with rose. It is very tender, very delicate, preserving its rose colored rings after cooking, and from two to two and a half inches in diameter. This description is from the Bon Jardinier for 1841. The edition for 1842 states that this variety is highly esteemed in the north of Italy, and that it is, in fact, one of the best kinds for the table.—Hovey’s Magazine.
FIELD ROOT CROPS.
From mid-winter, and especially just before spring opens, beets, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, ruta baga, and mangel wurtzel are of the highest utility. After months of dry fodder, and of slops thickened with corn-meal, cattle need—their stomach, their blood need—a change of diet; and none can be better than roots. At the East it is no longer a debatable question—root crops are as regularly laid in as grain or grass crops. The chief difficulty at the East, in introducing “new-fangled notions,” arises from the regular routine habits of farmers and their settled aversion to change from old ways. Very little of this spirit exists at the West. There the very essence of life is change. The population have broken up from old homesteads, moved off from old States, abandoned the comforts and settled life of long tilled agricultural districts—to come into a new country, where they have to practise new ways, live differently, and labor by new methods; and, by consequence, the farming community of the West are remarkably free to meet and adopt agricultural improvements. But the difficulty lies in a different direction. The farmers have large farms—are ambitious of large crops, large herds of cattle, large droves of hogs, and of a style of husbandry which brings in a large pile, and all at once; so that the idea of good farming is large farming. Many a sturdy Kentuckian will very patiently plow, two or three times, his fifty or hundred acres of corn, and think nothing of it; but to put in half an acre of carrots, or beets, to weed and work, to harvest and store the vexatious little crop, this seems a piddling business. Our big prairie farmers, our heavy bottom-land farmers, our stock farmers who “hog” one or two hundred acres of corn, of their own planting or of their neighbor’s, they do not love little work. We know a man who lives on thirty acres of land of about a middling quality. He winters seven cows, two horses, and two pigs. He raises corn and grass
enough for his own use, and sells none. Every year he puts in about a quarter of an acre of parsnips, or ruta baga, for winter and spring fodder. His garden in summer, and his dairy all the year round, are represented in market. He probably does not receive five dollars at once, on any one sale, through the year. We never looked into that old chest under his bed; but we will venture much, that if the shrewd housewife would keep her eagle eyes off long enough to give us a chance, it would be found that this man has made, and laid up, more money in the last five years from his thirty acres, than any farmer about here from six times the amount. Our farmers have not grown rich on large and careless farming; but many are growing rich on small farms and careful husbandry.
When the dairy shall be more thought of—when wintering stock, and fattening it, shall be more carefully studied—we predict that our farmers will annually raise thousands of bushels of roots, and have capacious cellars under their barns to store them in.
CULTIVATION OF FRUIT-TREES.
We must give up thinking of remedies for blights and diseases of fruit-trees and seek after preventives. Amputation may limit its ravages; but surgery is not a remedy, but a resource after remedies fail. We must, it seems to us, look for a preventive in a wiser system of fruit cultivation. To this subject we shall now speak.