TURNIPS AS SHEEP FEED.

Colonist, Volume LV, Issue 13649, 14 February 1913, Page 8

TURNIPS AS SHEEP FEED.

The turnip is a hardy biennial; its root is hard and woody in the wild state, but cultivation has converted it into the useful vegetable it is, though bad cultivation and unsuitable condition© allow it to revert at onco to its'uncultivated etate. Turnips depend mainly upon an abundant, supply of manure and water; Turnips are sown in Scotland on one-seventh of the total arable area, and are sown on light and strong land, on thin land and on deep, on every kind of arable farm. No matter .what may be its climatic aspect, soil or situation, turnips arc sown. It is an expensive and precarious crop, subject to insect attacks, to linger-and-toe, to drought, frost, mildew, etc. Denmark for example grows only one acre of turnips, mangels, kolil rabi, and other root crops for every \ fivo acres of corn, for Denmark is not a grain growing country. If turnips are not grown, how is the fertility of the soil to be maintained? Denmark gives answer: Whero others have 7,000 or 8,000 acres of tares, Denmark has nine times as much. If, instead of growing 8 to 10 tons of roots which only give one ton of feeding material, a mixture of tares, peas, beans, and oats were grown for summer feeding, and the pasture that would be grazed were- mado into hhy for winter feed, how much more .stock could be kept? The land would improve in condition, as turnips, ecourge it, while the tares peas, beans, etc., would enrich it and keep it free from weeds.—"Dundee Advertiser."