Turnip field

“ Of the turnip we have now many varieties—though it is only seventy or eighty years since it was first introduced into field culture—at least in those districts of the island in which its importance is most fully recognised. The history of its introduction into Scotland is thus given by Mr Stephens—
"The history of the turnip, like that of other cultivated plants, is obscure. ”

“ The other remained a common soldier and was poor. At last the poor one, with the hope to improve his fortune, took off his soldiering coat and became a farmer. He ploughed a small field and sowed turnip seed. The seed came up, and the farmer soon observed that one turnip was growing much faster than any of the others. It grew till he thought it would never get done growing, and at the end of the season, when he uprooted it, that one turnip filled a cart and required two oxen to draw it. Truly it was the queen of turnips, and its like had never been seen before, nor ever will be again. ”

“ There is an old saying that you can’t get blood out of turnips, but the New Zealanders do it by feeding them to sheep. In fact, practically every good chop I eat here is mostly turnips, and the people tell me that turnip-fed sheep produce the best mutton. In buying a sheep farm the first question asked is whether the land will raise turnips, and if so the price is much higher than it would be otherwise. Turnip fields are to be seen on every landscape, of which they often form a striking feature. The crop grows luxuriantly and forms a carpet of bright green. ”

“ Happily, the gardener has many friends that are insufficiently known to the farmer, not the least important being the starlings, song birds, and occasionally (but not often) the sparrows. Where the cultivation is good and small birds abound, the Turnip crop is pretty safe, and the general routine of culture sketched above will certainly promote, if it does not absolutely secure, its safety. The worst foes of the Turnip in the field are the fly and the caterpillar; but in the garden, and more especially the old garden, anbury is the most to be feared. ”

“ While young, the flesh is tender and delicate, possessing the combined flavor of the cabbage and turnip.
They are said to keep better than any other bulb, and to be sweeter and more nutritious than the cabbage or white turnip. "In the north of France, they are extensively grown for feeding cattle,—a purpose for which they seem admirably adapted, as, from having a taste similar to the leaves of others of the species, they are found not to impart any of that peculiar, disagreeable taste to the milk, which it acquires when cows are fed on turnips." ”

“ Specimens sometimes measure ten or twelve inches in diameter. The leaves are large, and rather numerous; the skin white below the surface, and often white above, but sometimes washed with green; flesh white and coarse-grained, but sweet. Very late.
It is but a sub-variety of the Common Flat Turnip, and oftentimes attains a most extraordinary size. For the garden, it possesses no value. It is grown exclusively as an agricultural or field turnip; but is very liable to rot; soon becomes spongy; and can only be classed as third-rate, even for feeding stock. ”

“ The turnip is grown very largely in the United States both as a vegetable and as a field crop for feeding purposes. The turnip used as a vegetable usually has a spherical bulb. It is a crop that grows late in the autumn. In the central part of the country it is usually sown as a field crop after the harvesting of some of the early crops as, for instance, early potatoes, and is ready for harvest late in the autumn, just before freezing weather begins. Grown as a vegetable, however, it is grown early as well as late. ”

“ Increase the size of your turnip by chemical applications, said agricultural chemistry, and you have a heavier crop to sell to the sugar-manufacturer. And the grower took the advice, and rejoiced in his augmenting profits. The practices of North British turnip-growers were introduced by British settlers, and their imitators, on the plains of Magdeburg; and root crops more like those which cover our British turnip-fields were seen, for the first time, on the banks of the Elbe. ”

“ We think the yield is larger when sown by the middle of June. The only way to get good early turnips is to sow them very early. The flat, or common field turnip, is easily grown on new land, or on any rich soil tolerably free from weeds and not infested with worms. ”

“ When green vegetables are scarce, many people find desirable dishes made from turnip tops, if properly and presentably cooked. The growth of these turnip tops may be forced by placing the roots in a greenhouse, hot frame, or any warm place, when the tops will soon be seen to begin to sprout, and will prove far more delicate and edible than the ordinary turnip tops grown in a garden or field from turnips. ”

“ The crop will be fit for use when the bulbs are of the size of an early Dutch turnip: when allowed to grow much larger, they are only fit for cattle. Of field varieties, the bulbs sometimes attain an immense size; weighing, in some cases, fourteen pounds."
Seed.—Take up a few plants entire in autumn; preserve them during winter in the manner of cabbages or turnips; and transplant to the open ground in April, two feet apart in each direction. The seeds are not distinguishable from those of the Swede or Ruta-baga Turnip, and retain their vitality from five to seven years. ”

“ Among those that have been made upon turnips, he will have noticed also that the crop, in about nine cases out of ten, is under twenty tons; that these crops vary, for the most part, between nine and sixteen tons; and [265] that some farmers are not ashamed to publish to the world, that they are content with crops of from seven to ten tons of turnips an acre. Where is our skill in the management of turnip soils, if, in the average of years, such culture and crops satisfy any considerable number of our more intelligent tenantry? ”

“ I should not be afraid to bet that these turnips, thus standing in rows at nearly four feet distance, will be a crop twice as large as any in the parish of Thursley, though there is, I imagine, some of the finest turnip-land in the kingdom. It seems strange that men are not to be convinced of the advantage of the row-culture for turnips. They will insist upon believing that there is some ground lost. They will also insist upon believing that the row-culture is the most expensive. How can there be ground lost if the crop be larger? ”

“ Fall turnips are so easily grown that they require but few words. They are valuable vegetables for utilizing space in the garden after early crops, as peas, beans, potatoes, etc., are removed. The seed of ruta-baga, or Swedish turnips, should be planted earliest—from the twentieth of June to the tenth of July in our latitude. This turnip should be sown in drills two feet apart, and the plants thinned to eight inches from one another. It is very hardy, and the roots are close-grained, solid, and equally good for the table and the family cow. ”

“ We may advert, as an illustration, to the feeding properties of the turnip. It is usual to reckon the value of a crop of turnips by the number of tons per acre which it is found to yield when so many square yards of the produce are weighed. But this may be very fallacious in many ways. If they are white turnips, for instance, nine tons of small will contain as much nourishment as ten tons of large—or twenty-seven tons an acre of small turnips will feed as many sheep as thirty tons per acre of large turnips. ”

“ Quaere, how long the trade of turnips has been here? For it is certain that all the turnips that were brought to Bristoll eighty years since [now 1680] were from Wales; and now none come from thence, for they have found out that the red sand about Bristoll doth breed a better and a bigger turnip.
Burbidge is also remarqueable for excellent pease. ___________________________________
The turf of our downes, and so east and west, is the best in the world for gardens and bowling- greens; for more southward it is burnt, and more north it is course. ”

“ A single horse ploughing the drills astonished the country people, who, till then, had never seen fewer than four yoked. About the year 1771 our tenants were well-disposed to the culture of turnips. They begin to have an idea of property in winter as well as in summer; nor is it any longer thought bad neighbourhood to drive off cattle that are trespassing upon their winter crops.” [189]
The young Laird of Col, just before Johnson’s visit, had gone to Hertfordshire to study farming, and had brought back “the culture of turnips. His intention is to provide food for his cattle in the winter. ”

“ I have sheep in turnips, and these are so frozen that they can only just eat enough to keep them alive.... I should say the farmers must now see the necessity of cultivating the turnip. I have heard many say it was not worth the expense, and now they are running and riding in all directions for keep for cattle, and in all probability will lose more than they will get by cattle for three years to come. ”

“ In some parts turnips are sown broadcast, and this work is usually performed by a machine and not, by hand, but "drilling" is considered a far superior method, especially when the water-drill is used and manure put in to the extent of about two hundredweights per acre. Turnips are sown in November and December, and the yield on good land is generally from 25 to 35 tons per acre. Sheep are fed on turnips during June, July, and August, and are given hay and chaff to pull at in racks.
Peas are generally grown as a preparatory crop for both wheat and barley, and are often taken after oats. ”

“ Whole fields of turnips are often cleared, that is, the leaves of the plants are stripped off, by myriads of the turnip fly or beetle that come flying unexpectedly, one knows not whence. It was estimated that the loss through this to one county in a single season was once £100,000, and Miss Ormerod states that in 1881, when there was an invasion of the turnip fly, spreading nearly all over our country, the loss amounted to considerably more than half a million. ”

“ It is chiefly useful for small farmers, in soils unfit for the turnip, but who are forced to raise it for milk-cows, or to support, in the winter, the sheep they feed in the summer on the commons, and which they keep, perhaps, principally in the night, on the fields they have no other means of manuring. But it may be useful, even on proper turnip soils, to save the latter part of the crop from the sudden frosts and sunshine in the spring, or in an open winter, which rot so great a portion of it ”

“ Why, that it is not unusual to meet with sheep-owners who lose at least one out of every fifteen, and all owing, as may easily be proved, to this mode of management. In the first place, the turnip is a kind of food entirely foreign to the nature of the sheep, and one to which, at first, they evince great repugnance. There are many varieties of sheep incapable of feeding on turnips, owing to the form of the face, the upper-jaw projecting considerably past the lower, hindering the chisel-shaped teeth from being brought to bear upon the root. ”

“ This Weald is, indeed, not much of land for turnips; but from what I see here, and from what I know of the weather, I think that the turnips must be generally good. The after-grass is surprisingly fine. The lands which have had hay cut and carried from them are, I think, more beautiful than I ever saw them before. It should, however, always be borne in mind that this beautiful grass is by no means the best. An acre of this grass will not make a quarter part so much butter as an acre of rusty-looking pasture, made rusty by the rays of the sun. ”

“ Hence, the turnip can never grow so luxuriantly, nor be counted on with such certainty, here as in Great Britain; nor can animals be fed on it in Winter, except at the heavy cost of pulling or digging, cutting off the tops and carefully housing in Autumn, and then slicing and feeding out in Winter. It is manifest that turnips thus handled, however economically, cannot compete with hay and corn-fodder in our Eastern and Middle States; nor with these and the cheaper species of grain in the West, as the daily Winter food of cattle. ”

“ After the turnips have been taken out of the ground in autumn, and exposed to the air for a while, they are put in a heap upon the field, covered with straw at the top, and on the sides, and with earth over the straw. By this means they stand the winter very well here, and do not become spungy. The Indians were very fond of turneps, and called them sometimes Hopniss, sometimes Katniss. The Swedes likewise cultivated carrots, in the old man’s younger years. Among the fruit-trees were Apple-trees. ”

“ The Turnip is not a difficult garden crop; indeed, the simplest management will produce an ample supply, and any fairly good ground will suffice for it. But whatever is worth doing is worth doing well, and a gardener may be pardoned for taking an especial pride in producing a sufficiency of handsome and tender Turnips. The great point is to insure a succession through a long season, or, say, the whole year round, for Turnips are always in request, and at certain periods of the year delicate young roots are greatly valued for the table. ”

“ On the other hand, the small farmers who occupied separated holdings were deterred from improving by the fear of a rise in rent. Townshend’s belief in the growing of turnips gained him the nickname of “Turnip Townshend.” In their cultivation he adopted Tull’s practice of drilling and horse-hoeing, and he was also the founder of the Norfolk or four-course system, the first of those rotations which dispense with the necessity of a summer-fallow and provide winter-keep for live-stock (see below, Rotation of Crops) . ”