Of seeding grain

XLIV.  The quantity of seed required for one jugerum is, of beans, four modii, of wheat five modii, of barley six modii, and of spelt ten modii:  in some places a little more or a little less; if the soil is rich, more; if it is thin, less.  Wherefore you should observe how much it is the custom to sow in your locality in order that you may do what the region and the quality of the soil demands, which is the more necessary as the same amount of seed will yield in some localities ten for one, and in others fifteen for one, as in Etruria.  In Italy also, in the region of Sybaris it is said that seed yields as much as one hundred for one, and as much is claimed for the soil of Syria at Gadara, and in Africa at Byzacium.[95]

It is also important to consider whether you will sow in land which is cropped every year which we call restibilis, or in fallow land (vervactum), which is [ploughed in the spring and so] allowed an interval of rest.”

“In Olynthia,” said Agrius, “they are said to crop the land every year but to get a greater yield every third year.”

“A field ought to lie fallow every other year,” said Stolo, “or at least be planted with some crop which makes less demand upon the soil.”

3 deg.  CULTIVATING TIME

“Tell us,” said Agrius, “about the third operation which relates to the cultivation and the nourishment of the crops.”

Of the conditions of plant growth

“All things which germinate in the soil,” replied Licinius, “in the soil also are nourished, come to maturity, conceive, are pregnant and in due time bear fruit or ear, so each fruit after its kind yields seed similar to that from which it is sprung.  Thus if you pluck a blossom or a green pear from a pear tree, or the like from any other tree, nothing will grow again in that place during the same year, because a tree cannot have two periods of fruition in the same season.  They produce only as women bear children, when their time has come.”

XLV.  Barley usually sprouts in seven days after it has been sowed, and wheat not much later, while the legumes almost always sprout in four or five days, except the bean, which is somewhat later.  Millet and sesame and the other similar grains sprout in the same time unless some thing in the nature of the soil or the weather retards them.  If the locality is cold, those plants which are propagated in the nursery and are tender by nature ought to be protected from the frosts by coverings of leaves or straw, and, if rains follow, care should be taken that water is not permitted to stand any where about them, for ice is a poison to tender roots under ground, as to sprouts above, and prevents them from developing normally.  In autumn and winter the roots develop more than does the leaf of the plant because they are nourished by the warmth of the roof of earth, while the leaf above is cut down by the frosty air.  We can learn this by observation of the wild vegetation which grows without the intervention of man, for the roots grow more rapidly than that which springs from them, but only so far as they are actuated by the rays of the sun.  There are two causes of the growth of roots, the vitality of the root itself by which nature drives it forward, and the quality of the soil which yields a passage more easily in some conditions than in others.