Ten Years' Experience in Raising Carrots and Cabbage

Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes

• Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics). • Text in bold is enclosed by equal signs (=bold=). • The following issues should be noted, along with the resolution:

5 dry lo[o/a]m for the carrot patch. Replaced.

16 three hundred sto[r/n]e hog so fat, that a man of Replaced. seventy-five

17 meal per day, I will fatten a three hundred Replaced. sto[r/n]e hog so

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INDEX.

PAGE Kind of Soil for Carrots, 5 Sowing Carrots, 6 Tilling ” 10 Hoeing ” 11 Weeding ” 12 Digging ” 13 Storing ” 15 The Value of Carrots, 16 Carrots vs. Other Roots, 17 How to Raise and Clean the Seed, 18 How to Select Good Seed, 19 Raising Cabbage, 20 Transplanting Cabbage, 21 Tilling ” 23 Heading ” 23 Lice on ” 24 Gathering ” 25 Five Acres Enough, 26 To Make Plenty of Manure for these Five Acres, 27 Every Man his own Barometer, 28 Weather Sayings, &c., 30

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TEN YEARS’ EXPERIENCE

IN RAISING

CARROTS AND CABBAGE.

H. A. COOK, Hillsdale, Col. Co., N. Y.

New York: BROWN & HEWITT, PRINTERS, 37 PARK ROW. 1866.

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by

H. A. COOK,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

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INTRODUCTION.

Having observed from early youth by the little garden bed that carrots were a greatly productive crop, and the most nutritious root that I grew, I desired to try their cultivation on a large scale.

The idea seemed to be indelible on my mind, and as soon as age and circumstances would allow I essayed to gratify my desire. My great obstacle was Mr. Weed, which was bound to get ahead of my carrots; but being somewhat indefatigable in my energies, I gave close application to years of experiments in devising a plan how I should raise them without such a heavy tax upon the back, which seemed to almost “crack” under the old system. I first saw that I must be careful in selecting my seed, then I must devise a plan to force it, and then seek a plan to sow it (seeing that I could not sow it with a drill), then I must devise a different mode of cultivation, and lastly a plan to gather them more easily.

After having reduced my experiments to a system, and found that I could raise them with less than half the expense of the old way, I conceived the idea of putting my plan of raising in the form of a pamphlet, and disclosing it to the world. While raising carrots I also experimented on cabbages, and found them also to be a remunerative crop. The success which I reached in raising them I attribute to a composition which I apply to the roots, so that they may be transplanted in a dry day instead of a wet one, thereby leaving the ground mellow; my entirely new mode of culture, and, lastly, my valuable composition (which is simple, cheap, and in the reach of all) for the heads, which augments the crop by half at least. Here, reader, I will leave you to peruse the following pages.

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TEN YEARS’ EXPERIENCE

IN RAISING

CARROTS AND CABBAGE.

I estimate that I can raise one acre of carrots as easily as two acres of corn. Upon keeping a close account in the year 1864 of my expenses in raising an acre of 500 bushels, I found it to be $50, aside from interest of land. At least he who will follow the instructions of the following pages may raise them at a cost of 10 cents per bushel.

Part 2

Kind of Soil.—Should be the same as for corn. Loose ground, even, quite moist, will raise the largest carrots in a dry season, while a sandy or quite gravelly soil will do the best in a wet season. It is best to select a somewhat dry loam for the carrot patch.

Plow the ground in autumn to kill all grass and weed roots, simultaneously destroying many weed seeds, and level the plot well that it may be more easily leveled in spring. Manure should also be plowed under in the fall, that most of the weed seeds which it contains will be rendered lifeless by the action of the winter’s frost. Hog manure composted with swamp muck is the best. If from necessity you must manure in spring, look to it that your manure has no weed-seed in it.

Never put carrots two years in succession upon the same ground, for they seem to be very exhausting to a certain ingredient of the soil necessary for their growth, and only applicable to their nature; however, not rendering the soil futile for almost any other crop, or apparently not diminishing its strength more than an ordinary corn crop.

Kind of Seed.—The long orange is the best for nearly every purpose, although the white may grow as many bushels. Always get new seed, which you can designate by its being a lively green. Old seed is of a yellowish hue, and is much longer sprouting (a fact common to all old seeds).

Sowing.—Sow as early as the dryness of the ground will admit—if it is done in April the larger will be the crop—but by all means never work in, or be found on your ground when it is wet, if so, you will certainly be sorry. Make it your rule never to be on your patch when the dirt adheres to your hoe.

Reader, if you adopt the plan of these pages, please remember their italics. By sowing early—if you are a farmer—your weeding will be done before haying, and the carrots will be ripened to dig before the usual heavy fall rains come on. Carrots that have ripened before digging seem to have more solidity, and are not so watery as those which are sowed late, and consequently dug when growing. Hence we must draw the inference that early sowed carrots are worth more for feeding, as with any vegetable that ripens before gathering. These latter remarks are applicable to the 42d° of latitude. Plow deeply, as they will root as deeply as you plow, if the soil extends as far. Level the ground that you may cover the carrots more uniformly, and that in tilling you may not work the dirt from the carrots in the higher places, consequently leave the root protruding above ground, nor choke those in lower places by working the dirt into the hollows. Never ridge the drill for carrots, for in tilling you necessarily work the dirt away, and my experience is, that carrots will not thrive best except the upper end of the carrot be allowed to keep a level with the surface of the ground.

Harrow the last time in a contrary direction from which you design to sow. It pays well to handrake the ground before sowing. If the ground is sideling make your drills directly up and down the slope, that in tilling you may not work too much dirt upon the upper side of the carrot.

Now make a hand dray with thills and four prongs, or teeth, with the bottoms inclining backward (because if so, it will run more steady), and two feet apart. Make the bottoms of the teeth a little wedge shape—quite blunt.

Now draw a line across your patch, and let one prong of the dray run close to it. Returning, let one prong follow the last mark back, straightening the crook. Set the line anew every time around within two inches of the last mark, that you may the more easily keep your work straight, and all the drills a uniform distance apart, the importance of which will be seen especially at the first time of cultivating, and at the time of plowing them out in the fall, as I shall subsequently show. Do not dray out many marks ahead of sowing, as it is better to have fresh dirt come in contact with the seed. Three or four days before you wish to sow, moisten your seed thoroughly, and set it in a warmish place, say on the mantle-piece, near the stove pipe, stirring it once a day. If a few seeds should have sprouted a little at sowing time all is well; but be cautious that they do not get too dry before covering. The best carrots I ever raised, and the most easily tilled, were sprouted the sixteenth of an inch at sowing time. If the ground—from the effects of a late rain—has become too wet when you are ready to sow, and your seed is liable to sprout, put it in a bag that it may drain, and hang it in the cellar that the cool air of the cellar will keep it back. Do not keep it there more than twelve hours lest it rot, but bring it to the warm air for another twelve hours, till you think it again has a tendency to germinate, when if the ground is not yet fit to sow, go with it to the cellar again. In this way I have kept it from sprouting for eight days before my ground was fit to sow because of the long rains, when, if I had kept it behind the stove pipe it would have spoiled. In five days after sowing my carrots appeared above ground.

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