The Root Crops - With Information on Turnips, Swedes, Mangolds, Carrots, Kohlrabi and Their Cultivation

By Read Books Ltd.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473354395

Book preview

The Root Crops

With Information on Turnips,

Swedes, Mangolds, Carrots,

Kohlrabi and Their Cultivation

By

James A. S. Watson

&

James A. More

Contents

TURNIPS AND SWEDES

THE ROOT CROPS

TURNIPS AND SWEDES

TURNIPS and swedes are biennial plants belonging to the cruciferous genus Brassica: they are termed roots, but the fleshy portions are in fact enlarged hypocotyls and contain but little true root tissue. Their habit is to store up large quantities of food material in the first year of their growth and to develop their reproductive parts and to ripen their seed in the second season. The species that do not develop swollen hypocotyls are known as rapes, and are grown for seed production and for soiling or folding.

Turnips and swedes form our most widely cultivated root crop, especially in the northern and more humid regions. It is commonly but wrongly believed that the turnip was brought to Britain about the time of the origination of the Norfolk rotation, and that it is therefore a comparatively recent introduction; in reality it was cultivated in gardens at a much earlier period. During the early days of field cultivation turnips were sown broadcast, but about the end of the eighteenth century drilling on ridges began to be common. About thirty years later a new sort, possessing distinct characteristics, was introduced from the Continent and called a Swede, after the country of its origin. Turnips and swedes increased rapidly in popularity as soon as the system of drill cultivation had been established, as up to this time the only means of bringing foul land back to a state of cleanliness and fertility was to turn it over to bare fallow. Turnips grown in drills, however, permitted cleaning operations and avoided the waste and expense due to the want of a crop.

Root crops are grown with the primary object of producing winter food for stock, and differ from potatoes in being almost universally consumed on the holding, thus conserving the soil fertility. They also, as mentioned above, form a most important cleaning crop in a great many rotations. The food value of turnips is high—not weight for weight with other foods, but in proportion to the dry-matter content. In its nature the turnip is not comparable to a roughage like straw or hay, because its bulk consists not of indigestible fibre but of water. The great advantage of roots, of course, is that they provide in a palatable form succulent food at a time of the year when no other may be available. When fed to cattle their slightly laxative qualities balance the binding effect of dry fodder such as straw. A large proportion of the turnip crop is eaten off by sheep, and some light-land farmers still maintain that without their turnip-fed sheep they could not keep their farms under the plough. Folding is unsuitable for heavy land as it would cause puddling.

Varieties.—Those sorts of turnips and swedes which produce the highest yield per acre, and at the same time