Part 7

II. The proper Quantity of Seed to be drill’d on an Acre, is much less than must be sown in the common Way; not because Hoeing will not maintain as many Plants as the other; for, on the contrary, Experience shews it will, _cæteris paribus_, maintain more; but the Difference is upon many other Accounts: As that ’tis impossible to sow it so even by Hand, as the Drill will do; for let the Hand spread it never so exactly (which is difficult to do some Seeds, especially in windy Weather), yet the Unevenness of the Ground will alter the Situation of the Seed; the greatest Part rebounding into the Holes, and lowest Places; or else the Harrows, in Covering, draw it down thither; and tho’ these low Places may have Ten Times too much, the high Places may have little or none of it: This Inequality lessens, in Effect, the Quantity of the Seed; because Fifty Seeds, in Room of One, will not produce so much as One will do; and where they are too thick, they cannot be well nourished, their Roots not spreading to near their natural Extent, for Want of Hoeing to open the Earth. Some Seed is buried (by which is meant the laying them so deep, that they are never able to come up, as _Columella_ cautions, _Ut absque ulla Resurrectionis Spe sepeliantur_): Some lies naked above the Ground; which, with more uncovered by the first Rain, feeds the Birds and Vermin.

Farmers know not the Depth that is enough to bury their Seed, neither do they make much Difference in the Quantity they sow on a rough, or a fine Acre; tho’ the same that is too little for the one, is too much for the other; ’tis all mere Chance-work, and they put their whole Trust in good Ground, and much Dung, to cover their Errors.

The greatest Quantity of Seed I ever heard of to be usually sown, is in _Wiltshire_, where I am informed by the Owners themselves, that on some Sorts of Land they sow Eight Bushels of Barley to an Acre; so that if it produce four Quarters to an Acre, there are but four Grains for one that is sown, and is a very poor Increase, tho’ a good Crop; this is on Land plowed once, and then double-dung’d, the Seed only harrow’d into the stale and hard Ground[47]; ’tis like not two Bushels of the eight will enter it to grow; and I have heard, that in a dry Summer an Acre of this scarce produces four Bushels at Harvest.

[47] Stale Ground is that which has lain some considerable time after Plowing, before it is sown, contrary to that which is sown immediately after plow’d; for this last is generally not so hard as the former.

But, in Drilling, Seed lies all the same just Depth, none deeper, nor shallower, than the rest; here’s no Danger of the Accidents of burying, or being uncover’d, and therefore no Allowance must be made for them; but Allowance must be made for other Accidents, where the Sort of Seed is liable to them; such as Grub, Fly, Worm, Frost, _&c._

Next, when a Man unexperienced in this Method has proved the Goodness of his Seed, and Depth to plant at it, he ought to calculate what Number of Seeds a Bushel, or other Measure or Weight, contains: For one Bushel or one Pound of small Seed, may contain double the Number of Seeds, of a Bushel, or a Pound, of large Seed of the same Species.

This Calculation is made by weighing an Ounce, and counting the Number of Seeds therein; then weighing a Bushel of it, and multiplying the Number of Seeds of the Ounce, by the Number of Ounces of the Bushel’s Weight; the Product will shew the Number of Seeds of a Bushel near enough: Then, by the Rule of Three, apportion them to the Square Feet of an Acre; or else it may be done, by divideing the Seeds of the Bushel by the Square Feet of an Acre; the Quotient will give the Number of Seeds for every Foot: Also consider how near you intend to plant the Rows, and whether Single, Double, Treble, or Quadruple; for the more Rows, the more Seed will be required[48].

[48] The narrow Spaces (suppose seven Inches) betwixt Double, Treble, or Quadruple Rows, the Double having One, the Treble Two, and the Quadruple Three of them, are called _Partitions_.

The wide Space (suppose of near five Feet) betwixt any Two of these Double, Treble, or Quadruple Rows, is call’d an _Interval_.

Examine what is the Produce of one middle-siz’d Plant of the Annual, but the Produce of the best and largest of the perennial Sort; because that by Hoeing will be brought to its utmost Perfection: Proportion the Seed of both to the reasonable Product; and, when ’tis worth while, adjust the Plants to their competent Number with the Hand-hoe, after they are up; and plant Perennials generally in single Rows: Lastly, Plant some Rows of the Annual thicker than others, which will soon give you Experience (better than any other Rule) to know the exact Quantity of Seed to drill.

III. The Distances of the Rows are one of the most material Points, wherein we shall find many apparent Objections against the Truth; of which, tho’ full Experience be the most infallible Proof, yet the World is by false Notions so prejudiced against wide Spaces between Rows, that unless these common (and I wish I could say, only vulgar) Objections be first answer’d, perhaps no-body will venture so far out of the old Road, as is necessary to gain the Experience; without it be such as have seen it.

I formerly was at much Pains, and at some Charge, in improving my Drills, for planting the Rows at very near Distances; and had brought them to such Perfection, that One Horse would draw a Drill with Eleven Shares, making the Rows at three Inches and half Distance from one another; and at the same Time sow in them Three very different Sorts of Seeds, which did not mix; and these too, at different Depths; as the Barley-Rows were seven Inches asunder, the Barley lay four Inches deep; a little more than three Inches above that, in the same Chanels, was Clover; betwixt every Two of these Rows was a Row of St. Foin, cover’d half an Inch deep.

I had a good Crop of Barley the first Year; the next Year, Two Crops of Broad-Clover, where that was sown; and where Hop-Clover was sown, a mix’d Crop of That and St. Foin, and every Year afterwards a Crop of St. Foin; but I am since, by Experience, so fully convinced of the Folly of these, or any other such mix’d Crops, and more especially of narrow Spaces, that I have demolish’d these Instruments (in their full Perfection) as a vain Curiosity, the Drift and Use of them being contrary to the true Principles and Practice of Horse-Hoeing.

Altho’ I am satisfied, that every one, who shall have seen as much of it as I have, will be of my Mind in this Matter; yet I am aware, that what I am going to advance, will seem shocking to them, before they have made Trials.

I lay it down as a Rule (to myself) that every Row of Vegetables, to be Horse-ho’d, ought to have an empty Space or Interval of thirty Inches on one Side of it[49] at least, and of near five Feet in all Sorts of Corn.

[49] _Note_, We call it one Row, tho’ it be a Double, Treble, or Quadruple Row; because when they unite in the Spring, they seem to be all single; even the Quadruple then is but as one single Row.

Observe, that as wide Intervals are necessary for perfect Horse-hoeing, so the largest Vegetables have generally the greatest Benefit by them; tho’ small Plants may have considerable Benefit from much narrower Intervals than Five Feet.

The Intervals may be somewhat narrower for constant annual Crops of Barley, than of Wheat; because Barley does not shut out the Hoe-Plough so soon, nor require so much Room for Hoeing, nor so much Earth in the Intervals, it being a lesser Plant, and growing but about a Third-part of the Time on the Ground; but he that drills Barley, must resolve to reap it, and bind it up in Sheaves; for if he mows it, or does not bind it, a great Part will be lost among the Earth in the Intervals: But ’tis now found, that in a wet Harvest the best Way is not to bind up drill’d Barley or Oats; but instead thereof, to make up the Grips into little Heaps by Hands, laying the Ears upon one another inwards, and the Stubble-ones outwards; so that with a Fork that hath Two Fingers, and a Thumb, ’tis very easy to pitch such Heaps up the Waggons without scattering, or wasting any of the Corn.

’Tis also seen, that when the Reapers take Care to set their Grips with the But-ends in the Bottoms of the Intervals, and the Ears properly on the Stubble, they will so stand up from the Ground, as to escape much better from sprouting, than mow’d Corn.

In Hand-hoeing there is always less Seed, fewer Plants, and a greater Crop, _cæteris paribus_, than in the common Sowing: Yet there, the Rows must be much nearer together, than in Horse-hoeing; because as the Hand moves many times less Earth than the Horse, the Roots will be sent out in like Proportion; and if the Spaces or Intervals, where the Hand-hoe only scratches a little of the upper Surface of them, should be wide, they would be so hard and stale underneath, that the Roots of perennial Plants would be long in running thro’ them; and the Roots of many annual Plants would never be able to do it.

An Instance which shews something of the Difference between Hand-hoeing and Deep-hoeing is, That a certain poor Man is observ’d to have his Cabbages vastly bigger than any-body’s else, tho’ their Ground be richer, and better dung’d: His Neighbours were amaz’d at it, till the Secret at length came out, and was only this: As other People ho’d their Cabbages with a Hand-hoe, he instead thereof dug his with a Spade: And nothing can more nearly equal[50] the Use of the Horse-hoe than the Spade does.

[50] The Hoe-plough exceeds the Spade in this Respect, that it removes more of the Roots, and cuts off fewer; which is an Advantage when we till near to the Bodies of Plants that are grown large.

And when the Plants have never so much _Pabulum_ near them, their fibrous Roots cannot reach it all, before the Earth naturally excludes them from it; for, to reach it all, they must fill all the Pores[51], which is impossible: So far otherwise it is, that we shall find it probable, that they can only reach the least Part of it, unless the Roots could remove themselves from Place to Place, to leave such Pores as they had exhausted, and apply themselves to such as were unexhausted; but they not being endow’d with Parts necessary for local Motion (as Animals are), the Hoe-Plough suplies their Want of Feet; and both conveys them to their Food, and their Food to them, as well as provides it for them; for by transplanting the Roots, it gives them Change of the Pasture, which it increases by the very Act of changing them from one Situation to another, if the Intervals be wide enough for this Hoeing Operation to be properly perform’d.

[51] The Roots of a Mint, set a whole Summer in a Glass, kept constantly replenished with Water, will, in Appearance, fill the whole Cavity of the Glass; but by compressing the Roots, or by observing how much Water the Glass will hold when the Roots are in it, we are convinc’d, that they do not fill a Fourth-part of its Cavity; tho’ they are not stopp’d by Water, as they are by Earth.

The Objections most likely to prepossess Peoples Minds, and prevent their making Trials of this Husbandry, are these:

First, they will be apt to think, that these wide, naked Spaces, not being cover’d by the Plants, will not be sufficient to make a good Crop.

For Answer, we must consider, that tho’ Corn, standing irregular and _sparsim_, may seem to cover the Ground better than when it stands regular in Rows; this Appearance[52] is a mere _Deceptio visus_; for Stalks are never so thick on any Part of the Ground as where many come out of one Plant, or as when they stand in a Row; and a ho’d Plant of Corn will have Twenty or Thirty Stalks[53], in the same Quantity of Ground where an unho’d Plant, being equally single, will have only Two or Three Stalks. These tillered ho’d Stalks, if they were planted _sparsim_ all over the Interval, it might seem well cover’d, and perhaps thicker than the sown Crop commonly is; so that tho’ these ho’d Rows seem to contain a less Crop, they may contain, in reality, a greater Crop than the sown, that seems to exceed it; and ’tis only the different Placing that makes one seem greater, and the other less, than it really is; and this is only when both Crops are young.

[52] For the Eye to make a Companion betwixt a sown Crop and such a ho’d Crop, it ought, when ’tis half grown, to look on the ho’d Crop across the Rows; because in the other it does so, in Effect, which way soever it looks; but whatever Appearance the ho’d Crop of Vegetables (of as large a Species as Wheat) makes when young, it surely, if well managed, appears more beautiful at Harvest than a sown Crop.

[53] I have counted Fifty large Ears on one single ho’d Plant of Barley.

The next Objection is, That the Space or Interval not being _planted_, much of the Benefit of that Ground will be lost; and therefore the Crop must be less than if it were planted all over.

I answer, It might be so, if not Horse-ho’d; but if well Horse-ho’d, the Roots can run through the Intervals; and, having more Nourishment, make a greater Crop.

The too great Number of Plants, plac’d all over the Ground in common sowing, have, whilst it is open, an Opportunity of _wasting_, when they are very young, that Stock of Provision, for Want of which the greatest Part of them are afterwards starv’d; for their irregular Standing prevents their being relieved with fresh Supplies from the Hoe: Hence it is, that the old Method exhausting the Earth to no Purpose, produces a less Crop; and yet leaves less _Pabulum_ behind for a succeeding one, contrary to the Hoeing-Husbandry, wherein Plants are manag’d in all Respects by a quite different Oeconomy.

In a large Ground of Wheat it was prov’d, that the widest ho’d Intervals brought the greatest Crop of all: Dung without Hoeing did not equal Hoeing without Dung. And what was most remarkable, amongst Twelve Differences of wider and narrower Spaces, more and less ho’d, dung’d and undung’d, the Hand-sow’d was considerably the worst of all; tho’ all the Winter and Beginning of the Spring, that made infinitely the most promising Appearance; but at Harvest yielded but about One-fifth Part of Wheat of that which was most hoed; there was some of the most hoed, which yielded Eighteen Ounces of clean Wheat in a Yard in Length of a double Row, the Intervals being thirty Inches, and the Partition Six Inches[54].

[54] The same Harvest, a Yard in Length of a double Row of Barley, having Six Inches Partition, produc’d Eight hundred and Eighty Ears in a Garden; but the Grains happened to be eaten by Poultry before ’twas ripe, so that their Produce of Grains could not be known: One like Yard of a ho’d Row of Wheat, in an undung’d Field, produc’d Four hundred Ears of Lammas-Wheat.

A Third Objection like the two former is, that so small a Part of the Ground, as that whereon the Row stands, cannot contain Plants or Stalks sufficient for a full Crop.

This some Authors endeavour to support by Arguments taken from the perpendicular Growth of Vegetables, and the Room they require to stand on; both which having answer’d elsewhere, I need not say much of them here; only I may add, that if Plants could be brought to as great Perfection, and so to stand as thick all over the Land, as they do in the ho’d Rows, there might be produced, at once, many of the greatest Crops of Corn that ever grew.

But since Plants thrive, and make their Produce, in Proportion to the Nourishment they have within the Ground, not to the Room they have to stand upon it, one very narrow Row may contain more Plants than a wide Interval can nourish, and bring to their full Perfection, by all the Art that can be used; and ’tis impossible a Crop should be lost for want of room to stand above the Ground, tho’ it were less than a Tenth-part of the Surface[55].

[55] Mr. _Houghton_ calculates, that a Crop of Wheat of Thirty Quarters to an Acre, each Ear has two Inches and a Half of Surface; by which ’tis evident, that there would be Room for many such prodigious Crops to stand on.

And a Quick-hedge, standing between two Arable Grounds, one Foot broad at Bottom, and Eighteen Feet in Length, will, at fourteen Years Growth, produce more of the same Sort of Wood, than eighteen Feet square of a Coppice will produce in the same Time, the Soil of both being of equal Goodness.

This seems to be the same Case with our ho’d Rows; the Coppice, if it were to be cut in the first Years, would yield perhaps ten Times as much Wood, as the Hedge; but many of the Shoots of the Coppice constantly die every Year, for Want of sufficient Nourishment, until the Coppice is fit to be cut; and then its Product is much less than that of the Hedge, whose Pasture has not been over-stock’d to such a Degree as the Coppice-Pasture has been; and therefore brings its Crop of Wood to greater Perfection than the Coppice-Wood, which has Eighteen Times the Surface of Ground to stand on; The Hedge has the Benefit of Hoeing, as oft as the Land on either Side of it is till’d; but the Coppice, like the sown Corn, wants that Benefit.

In wide Intervals there is another Advantage of Hoeing, I mean Horse-hoeing (the other being more like Scratching and Scraping than Hoeing): There is room for many Hoeings[56], which must not come very near the Bodies of some annual Plants, except whilst they are young; but in narrow Intervals, this cannot be avoided at every Hoeing: ’Tis true, that in the last Hoeings, even in the middle of a large Interval, many of the Roots may be broken off by the Hoe-plough, at some considerable Distance from the Bodies; but yet this is no Damage, for they send out a greater Number of Roots than before; as in Chap. I. appears.

[56] Many Hoeings; but if it should be asked how many, we may take _Columella_’s Rule in hoeing the Vines, _viz._ _Numerus autem vertendi Soli (bidentibus) definiendus non est, cum quanto crebrior fit, plus prodesse fossionem conveniat. Sed impersarum Ratio modum postulat_. Lib. 4. Cap. 5.

Neither is it altogether the Number of Hoeings that determines the Degrees of Pulveration: For, Once well done, is Twice done; and the oftener the better, if the Expence be not excessive.

Poor Land, be it never so light, should have the most Hoeings; because Plants, receiving but very little Nourishment from the natural Pasture of such Land, require the more artificial Pasture to subsist on.

In wide Intervals, those Roots are broken off only where they are small; for tho’ they are capable of running out to more than the Length of the external Parts of a Plant; yet ’tis not necessary they should always do so; if they can have sufficient Food nearer to the Bodies[57] of the Plants.

[57] All the Mould is never so near to the Bodies of Plants, as ’tis when the Row stands on a high Six-feet Ridge, when the middle of the Interval is left bare of Earth, at the last Hoeing; for then all the Mould may be but about a Foot, or a Foot and half, distant from the Body of each Plant of a Treble Row.

And these new, young, multiply’d Roots are fuller of Lacteal Mouths than the older ones; which makes it no Wonder, that Plants should thrive faster by having some of their Roots broken off by the Hoe; for as Roots do not enter every Pore of the Earth, but miss great Part of the Pasture, which is left unexhausted, so when new Roots strike out from the broken Parts of the old, they meet with that Pasture, which their Predecessors miss’d, besides that new Pasture which the Hoe raises for them; and those Roots which the Hoe pulls out without breaking, and covers again, are turn’d into a fresh Pasture; some broken, and some unbroken: All together invigorate the Plants.

Besides, the Plants of sown Corn, being treble in Number to those of the drill’d, and of equal Strength and Bulk, whilst they are very young, must exhaust the Earth whilst it is open, thrice as much as the drill’d Plants do; and before the sown Plants grow large, the Pores of the Earth are shut against them, and against the Benefit of the Atmosphere; but for the drill’d, the Hoe gives constant Admission to that Benefit; and if the Hoe procures them (by dividing the Earth) Four Times the Pasture of the sown during their Lives, and the Roots devour but one half of that, then tho’ the ho’d Crop should be double to the sown, yet it might leave twice as much _Pabulum_ for a succeeding Crop. ’Tis impossible to bring these Calculations to Mathematical Rules; but this is certain in Practice, that a sown Crop, succeeding a large undung’d ho’d Crop, is much better than a sown Crop, that succeeds a small dung’d sown Crop. And I have the Experience of poor, worn out Heath-ground, that, having produc’d Four successive good ho’d Crops of Potatoes (the last still best), is become tolerable good Ground.

In a very poor Field were planted Potatoes, and, in the very worst Part of it, several Lands had them in Squares a Yard asunder; these were plowed four ways at different times: Some other Lands adjoining to them, of the very same Ground, were very well dung’d and till’d; but the Potatoes came irregularly, in some Places thicker, and in others thinner: These were not ho’d, and yet, at first coming up, looked blacker and stronger than those in Squares not dung’d, either that Year, or ever, that I know of; yet these Lands brought a good Crop of the largest Potatoes, and very few small ones amongst them; but in the dung’d Lands, for Want of Hoeing, the Potatoes were not worth the taking up; which proves, that in those Plants that are planted so as to leave Spaces wide enough for Repetitions of Hoeing, that Instrument can raise more Nourishment to them, than a good Coat of Dung with common Tillage.