in the hottest days. By this easy and expeditious culture, they attained all the perfection that could be desired; and surpassed those of the kitchen-garden, as much in goodness, as they did in bulk. Most of them weighed between fifteen and eighteen pounds, and the smallest between eight and ten. The weight of all the plants which grew on this bed, was 840 pounds." The Complete Farmer article comments that "the circumstance of the cabbages continuing firm and crisp in the hottest weather, is remarkable." Yet, the work reported that a similar experiment in England upon cabbages had made the same observations, and it was explained as an effect of good and deep hoeing as predicted by Jethro Tull. On lucerne Lucerne is the name of the alfalfa, which arose in France, Germany and Britain in the 16th century from the Provençal luzerno ("glow worm"), due to its shiny seeds. In the 1750s M. de Chateauvieux had experimented extensively on producing lucerne in beds, cultivated according to new husbandry, over several years. Most of the 25-page article on lucerne in The Complete Farmer (1777) was devoted to the outcomes of these experiments. Although M. de Chateauvieux agreed with M. Duhamel and other participants of the new husbandry, that lucerne and sainfoin thrive best when cultivated in beds, his practice differed in many respects from theirs. In his experiments he had some explicit expectations: "Lucern grows naturally with one large perpendicular, or tap-root, which penetrates very deep into the earth, and has few, if any, lateral roots. From similar experiments on other tap-rooted plants, I was induced to think, that this too, by transplanting it, and at the same time cutting off part of its tap-root, might be made to shoot out several horizontal roots, which, reaching into the loose mould of the alleys, and extending themselves there, would collect a greater quantity of nourishment for the plant, and consequently enable it to produce more abundant crops." The lucerne he had planted pushed out numbers of large lateral roots, and these branched out again into others, which according to him "may be multiplied without end by frequent culture of the alleys: for the horse-hoe has the fame effect on these horizontal roots as cutting has upon the.tap-root." About the method of transplanting the lucerne, M. de Chateauvieux explained: "I made several beds, some about three feet wide, (including the alleys) into,