The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England Volume the Second

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 edition. Excerpt: ...both requiring good land and abundant manure to maintain them in any degree of vigour, and now in many parts given up, for the introduction of a more gentle course, with more of grazing and stock; the four-course is, oats, fallow well dunged, wheat, clover with a light mixture of rye-grass on half the land, and beans, or beans and peas mixed, on the other half. By so alternating them, the clover and beans come each only once in 8 years, and are of surer produce, especially the clover, which does not bear frequent repetition. The six-course is, oats, beans drilled and hoed, wheat, fallow, wheat, clover. There is another course, which, though it may not be very common, I consider applicable to a kind of land which, without being a stiff clay, is much too strong and retentive for growing turnips, and if grown, for taking them off without injury: and as I have pursued it for 21 years with success, I feel myself more at liberty to recommend it to public notice. I was induced to take into my own management, though at an inconvenient distance from my residence, an estate of my own on the banks of the Tweed, which had been long subject to a severe course of wheat-growing, and was in consequence in an exhausted condition. One part of the farm consists of strong turnip-loam, which I immediately divided into five equal shares and managed in the five-course rotation, growing turnips in the regular course: the other consists of heavy land upon a retentive subsoil; this I divided into seven shares, planting some additional hedges to make the necessary equal divisions, and introduced upon it the following rotation: --oats, beans drilled and hoed, barley, naked fallow with dung, wheat, grass, grass; my object in making this arrangement was to obtain two years'...