Horse-hoeing husbandry

by Jethro Tull

Hence, I think, it may be inferred, that a Plant, which, by never having been robbed or stinted by other Plants, is strong, receives a much greater Increase from an equal Quantity of Food, than a Number of weak Plants (as thick ones are), equalling the Bulk of the single strong Plant, do.

And this of the Doctor’s have I seen by my own Observations confirmed in the Field in Potatoes, Turneps, Wheat, and Barley; a following Crop succeeds better after an equal Crop, consisting of a bare competent Number of strong Plants, than after a Crop of thick weak ones, cæteris paribus.

Thus the hoed Crops, if well managed, consisting of fewer and stronger Plants than the sown Crops of equal Produce, exhaust the Ground less; whereby, and by the much (I had almost said infinitely) greater Pulveration of the Soil, indifferent good Land may, for any thing I have yet seen to the contrary, produce profitable Crops always without Manure, or Change of Species, if the Soil be proper for it in respect of Heat and Moisture; and also as Crops of some Species, by their living longer, by their greater Bulk, or different Constitution, exhaust more than others, respect ought to be had to the Degree of Richness of the Soil, that is to produce each Species: The Sowing and the Hoeing Husbandry differ so much both in Pulveration and Exhaustion, that no good Argument can be drawn from the former against the latter: But tho’ a too great Number of Plants be, upon many Accounts, very injurious to the Crop, yet ’tis best to have a competent Number; which yet needs not be so exact, but that we may expect a great Crop from Twenty, Forty, or Fifty Plants in a Yard of the treble Row, if well managed.

All these Advantages will be lost by those Drillers, who do not overcome the unreasonable Prejudices of the unexperienced, concerning the Width of Intervals.

In wide Intervals, we can raise a good Crop with less Labour, less Seed, no Dung, no Fallow, but not without a competent Quantity of Earth, which is the least expensive of any thing given to Corn; the Earth of a whole good Acre being but about the Tenth Part of the common Expence; and of indifferent Land, a Twentieth; and such I count that of Five Shillings and Six-pence per Acre.

The Crop enjoys all the Earth; for betwixt the last Hoeing, and the Harvest, there remains nothing but Space empty of Mould in the Middle of the Intervals.

’Tis an Objection, that great Part of those wide Intervals must be lost[137], because the Wheat-roots do not reach it; but as we generally turn the Mould towards the Row at the last Hoeings, there is no Part of it above Two Feet distant from even the middle Row, and Seventeen Inches from either of the outside Rows.

[137]They do reach through all the Mould (as shall be proved by-and-by); and yet may leave sufficient Pasture behind; because it is impossible for them to come into Contact with all the Mould in One Year; no more than when Ten Horses are put into an Hundred Acres of good Pasture, their Mouths come into Contact with all the Grass to eat it in one Summer, though they will go all over it, as the Vine-roots go all over the Soil of a Vineyard without exhausting it all; because those Roots feed only such a bare competent Quantity of Plants, which do not overstock their Pasture.

The Superficies of the fibrous Roots of a proper Number of Wheat-plants bear a very small Proportion to the Superficies of the fine Parts of the pulverized Earth they feed on in these Intervals; for one cubical Foot of this Earth may, as is shewn in [p. 29]. have many thousand Feet of internal Superficies: But this is in proportion to the Degree of its Pulveration: and that Degree may be such as is sufficient to maintain a competent Number of Wheat-plants, without over-exhausting the vegetable Pasture, but not sufficient to maintain those, and a great Stock of Weeds besides, without over-exhausting it. And this was plainly seen in a Field of Wheat drilled on Six-feet Ridges, when the South Ends of some of the Ridges, and the North Ends of others, had their Partitions Hand hoed, and cleansed of Weeds, early in the Spring, the opposite Ends remaining full of a small Species of Weeds, called Crow-needles, which so exhausted the whole Intervals of the weedy Part of the Ridges, that the next Year the whole Field being drilled again with Wheat exactly in the Middle of the last Intervals, the following Crop very plainly distinguished how far each Ridge had its Partitions made clean of those small Weeds in the Spring, from the other End where the Weeds remained till full-grown; the Crop of the former was twice as good as that of the latter, even where both were cleansed of Weeds the next Spring. This Crop standing only upon that Part of the Mould, which was farthest from the Rows of the precedent Crop, proves that the Roots, both of the Wheat and Weeds, did enter all the Earth of the former Intervals.

It was also observable, that where the Partitions of Two of the Six-feet Ridges had been in the precedent Year cleansed of Weeds, and those of the adjoining Ridges on each Side of them not cleansed, the Row that was the next Year planted exactly in the Middle of the Interval between those two Ridges, was perceivably better than either of the Two Rows planted in the Intervals on the other Side of each of them: The Reason of which Difference must be, that the Middle of the Interval, that was between the Two cleansed Ridges, was fed on by the Wheat only, and by no Weeds; but the other Two Intervals were fed on by the Wheat on one Side, and by both the Wheat and Weeds on the other Side of each.