Farming for Self-Sufficiency

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The cultivation of all these root crops is similar, and so I will deal with them all together.

1. Dung the land well in the autumn.
2. Plough deeply.
3. Turnips: make a very fine seed bed and sow in May, but I would not recommend turnips or swedes for the self-supporter if he can possibly get in one of the other roots. For marigolds, sugar beet or fodder beet sow in rows about 20 inches apart (maybe 22 for marigolds) pretty thinly. Sow in the last fort-night in April in England, May in Scotland.
4. Horse hoe after a fortnight if you have a horse hoe. If you haven't 'side hoe' with the hand hoe. That is hoe only between the rows.
5. When the beet are dear little things with just four leaves, then single, or 'chop out and single'. This is done with the hand hoe and is very skilled work. Cut all the little plants out except one about every 8 or 9 inches with sugar and fodder beet, 12 inches with marigolds.
6. Horse hoe again if you can in, say, a fortnight. If not, hand hoe.
7. 'Second hoe' again by hand when weeds begin to show again.
8. Horse hoe again if you can. The more you hoe the better, for this is your 'cleaning crop', and your chance to get your land clean.

Harvest in September or October. Marigolds won't stand much frost at all, fodder beet little more. Harvest by pulling out of the ground, cutting the top off with a knife, throwing into a little pile, and covering with the tops against the frost. When you have done the whole field cart and clamp, just like potatoes. The beet will now keep the winter through and be a very valuable source of food for your cattle in the winter and 'hungry gap'. The hungry gap is at its worst in March and April. The grass hasn't begun to grow at that time, you have used up most of your hay, most of your roots, the animals are thin from the winter, it is a time when to be able to break into a big clamp of fodder beet or marigolds is very satisfying indeed. If you farm animals, farm all the year for the hungry gap and you won't go far wrong. I would recommend fodder beet more than anything.

CARROTS

Carrots grow well on light land. They want deeply cultivated land, and it should not have too much muck put on it the same year. Sow in rows about a foot apart (4 lbs. seed per acre), 'single when the plants come up to four to five inches between plants. Harvest and clamp like other roots. They are very high in feeding value, and will almost fatten pigs.

BEANS AND PEAS

I am dealing now only with fodder crops: that is crops to feed to animals. Beans and peas are the only really high source of protein that you can grow yourself, but unfortunately very little development has taken place in the British Isles about them. The old field bean, horse bean or tick bean, is still grown as a field crop on some farms on strong heavy land, but it has many disadvantages. It is a martyr to chocolate-spot, a fungoid disease, it can be ruined by aphids (particularly spring-sown varieties can), can be mown down by frost, and is very easily choked by weeds. Sow winter beans by the second week of October at 2-1/2 bushels per acre (a bushel weighs 65 lbs.). If you can't drill them plough them in-drop them behind a plough. Spring beans sow in February at 3-1/2 bushels an acre, but I don't recommend them. Beans must have lime if on acid soil and like potash and phosphates but do not need nitrogen because they make their own. If you harrow the field in dry weather in March it does good—lets the air in and tears out weeds. If you can horse hoe or hand hoe or hand weed so much the better. The land will get foul whatever you do. Winter beans should be ready to harvest in August, spring beans (if the aphids have not eaten them) well into September. Cut with a binder, or by hand, stook like wheat, and you can leave the stooks in the field until all your other corn is in because beans don't mind the rain. Thresh how you like, but normally they are not threshed until spring because fresh beans are not good for stock. They mature in the rick.

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