Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1875 — A Good Way to Raise Beets. [ARTICLE]

A Good Way to Raise Beets.

My mode of culture is to have the rows thirty inches and plants eighteen inches apart in the rows, giving each plant a little less than four square feet. A good crop will give beets weighing six pounds each, or thirty-four tons per acre, producing one-third more sugar per acre than the eleven tons of small beets usually grown for sugar, and worth twice as much for feeding, and raised at half the cost. One ton of beets contains 240 pounds of dry matter, nearly as nutritious as wheat flour. Land that will yield fifty bushels df corn (2,800 pounds) will produce twenty-five tons of beets, containing 6,000 pounds of dry nutritive food. The soil best adapted to the beet is a rich loam, of a clayey rather than a sandy character. A gravelly or light sandy soil is unsuitable for either beet or mangel culture, as is also a heavy clay soil in its natural state.'Heavy clay, improved by thorough drainage, deep fall plowing, and the surface made light with manure and deep tillage, is a soil in which the sugar beet will give a remunerative crop? Some of the finest crops I have ever seen have been grown on such a soil. All lands which are made wet by springs, or which retain stagnant water on the surface or within reach of the roots of the

should be thoroughly drained. Although the beet requires a large amount of moisture to carry on a healthy and vigorous growth, yet but few plants will show the presence of stagnant water quicker than the beet. It then assumes a yellowish hue and sickly aspect. It will not extend dow-nward its usual length, but on reaching the water will divide into numerous small fibers, which spread in all directions, to the great injury of the crop. Hence in the preparation of most clay soils thorough drainage is absolutely necessary. Owing to the early period at which the peet should be sown it is important that the work of preparation should as much as possible be done in the fall. All land for beets, except light, sandy soils, should be plowed in -the fall. If on stiffer soil plowing is deferred until spring it will turn up a cloddy surface, which is difficult to reduce and make mellow, and which is a great hindrance to the proper cultivation of this crop. Stiff clay soils plowed in the fall and left with rough surface are mellowed by the freezing and thawing and crumble readily in the spring. Roots need a more thorough preparation of the land than most of the hoed crops. The more completely the soil has been mixed and pulverized, the more readily will the roots reach their supply of food. It is a good practice, when once the land is prepared by drainage,. removal of stones and deep tillage, to continue to raise beets on the same field for successive years.— Henry Lane, in N. Y. World.

The Troy (N. Y.) Budget recently entered upon its eighty-sixth year. The Budget files cover six-sevenths of the national history. At its inception Washington had been President less than a year and the contest was still raging whether the Government should be a confederation or a republic. Through all these years the was published, and to-day it is one of the most vivacious octogenarians in the ranks of journalism. v'.