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The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6)

Chapter 48: CHAP. 46.—THE CROPS THAT SHOULD BE SOWN IN THE DIFFERENT SOILS.
By the Elder Pliny
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The text compiles practical and encyclopedic guidance on crop cultivation and plant uses, beginning with cereals and farm management — types of grain, sowing and harvesting schedules, ploughing, seed selection, storage, and maladies — plus weather and stellar prognostics for agricultural timing. It proceeds to flax and garden plants, detailing varieties, planting and processing methods, garden layout, and pest and disease remedies. The final section assembles medicinal preparations and numerous remedies derived from vegetables and herbs, listing applications and recipes for treating ailments using garden-grown plants.

CHAP. 46.—THE CROPS THAT SHOULD BE SOWN IN THE DIFFERENT SOILS.

This, then, is the opinion expressed by Cato340 on the subject: “In a dense and fertile soil wheat should be sown: but if the locality is subject to fogs, rape, radishes, millet, and panic. Where the land341 is cold and moist, sowing should be commenced earlier; but where it is hot, at a later period. In a red, black, or gravelly soil, provided it is not watery, lupines should be sown; but in chalk, red earth, or a watery soil, spelt.342 Where a locality is dry, free from weeds, and not overshadowed, wheat should be put in; and where the soil is strong and powerful, beans. Vetches should be grown in a soil as free from water and weeds as possible; while wheat and winter wheat are best adapted to an open, elevated locality, fully exposed to the warmth of the sun. The lentil thrives best in a meagre, red earth, free from weeds. Barley is equally suited for fallow land and for a soil that is not intended to be fallow, and three-month wheat, for a soil upon which a crop of ordinary wheat would never ripen, but strong enough to bear.”

The following, too, is sound advice:343 Those plants should be sown in a thin soil which do not stand in need of much nutriment, the cytisus, for instance, and such of the leguminous plants, with the exception of the chick-pea, as are taken up by the roots and not cut. From this mode of gathering them—“legere”—the legumina derive their name. Where it is a rich earth, those plants should be grown which require a greater proportion of nutriment, coleworts for instance, wheat, winter-wheat, and flax. The result, then, will be, that a light soil will be given to barley—the root of that grain standing in need of less nutriment—while a more dense, though easily-worked soil, will be assigned to wheat. In humid localities spelt should be sown in preference to wheat; but where the soil is of moderate temperature, either wheat or barley may be grown. Declivities produce a stronger growth of wheat, but in smaller quantities. Spelt and winter-wheat adopt a moist, cretaceous soil in preference to any other.

(18.) The only occasion on which there ever was a prodigy connected with grain, at least that I am aware of, was in the consulship of P. Ælius and Cneius Cornelius, the year344 in which Hannibal was vanquished: on that occasion, we find it stated, corn was seen growing upon trees.345