MANURES.
Under the improved system of a rotation of crops, root culture, and alternation of grass and grain, combined with yard and stall-feeding of sheep and cattle, the quantity of manure produced on the farms has in many instances been quadrupled, and the amelioration of the soil has been in the same proportion.
Ship loads of bones have been carried from this country to Europe to be crushed and used as bone-dust in fertilizing their soils; and we have been compelled to purchase, at exorbitant prices, of those nations, the wheat and other grain, that this same manure would have produced at home, and at the same time have lost to our farms the fertility it would have imparted.
Scrapings of streets, leached ashes, lime, refuse from skin, leather and soap boilers’ shops, slaughter houses, bones, weeds, salt, and any kind of animal or vegetable substances, by the addition of earth, may be largely increased in quantity and made to enrich and fertilize the soil.
But whatever improvements or discoveries may be made, it seems clear that the farmer for manure must rely mainly on his stables and yards, and his study should be to render these most efficient and available. One main object should be to prevent the escape of the liquid and volatile parts of the manure, as experience proves that these are the most active in exciting or supplying plants with food and thus accelerating their growth. The yards and the stables should be provided with litter, such as straw, hay, leaves, weeds, &c., with vegetable mould or muck, with the wash of roads or the overflowing of streams, in sufficient quantities to absorb and retain the urine and other liquid parts of the manure, and where these cannot be obtained, common earth or dry sand will be found of great utility in preventing the loss which must ensue where these parts of the manure are allowed to escape from the yard. If when the farmer cleans out his yards, he were to cover them with a hundred loads of vegetable or absorbent earth, he would find in the following year a greater number of loads of the most valuable manure, the greater part of which, without such precaution, would have been wholly lost.
Rotted manure may afford at limes more benefit to a particular crop, or may be more conveniently applied to some crops; but as a general rule, manure should be rotted in the ground where it is wanted. Some crops are rarely injured by any quantity that can be given them, as corn, potatoes, and roots generally; of course such should have the advantage of the first process of decomposition in the manure, while its after effect is reserved for the grains and grasses.
The great object in the application of manure should be, to make it afford as much soluble matter as possible to the roots of the plant; and that in a slow and gradual manner, so that it may be entirely consumed in forming its sap and organized parts.
All green succulent plants contain saccharine mucilaginous matter, with woody fibre, and readily ferment. They cannot, therefore, if intended for manure, be used too soon after their death.
By covering dead animals with five or six times their bulk of soil, mixed with one part of lime, and suffering them to remain for a few months, their decomposition would impregnate the soil with soluble matters, so as to render it an excellent manure, and by mixing a little fresh quick-lime with it at the time of its removal, the disagreeable effluvia would be in a great measure destroyed; and it might be applied in the same way as any other manure to crops.
Green vegetables, when put under the soil and submitted to the process of decomposition, are efficacious in restoring exhausted soils. Buckwheat and clover are striking instances of this power in green crops to fertilize soils, and both have been extensively used for this purpose.
PLOUGHING.
Much time and labour is saved in ploughing long instead of short ridges. For instance, suppose the ridges are 78 yards long, four hours and thirty-nine minutes are spent in turnings in a day’s work of eight hours! whereas, if the ridges are 274 yards long, one hour and nineteen minutes are sufficient in the same length of time.
Plough deep. Let a farmer examine the extent and depth to which the roots of grain, in a loose and favourable soil, will spread, and he will cease to wonder at the failure of a crop where the subsoil has never been stirred by the plough.
Small fibrous roots of vegetation extend to a depth, where the soil is loose and deep; and where vegetables thus take root they are much less affected by drought. The soil being turned up to the action of the sun and air, becomes enlivened, and better fitted for producing vegetation. An acre of land yielding a ton of hay, at the usual season of ploughing greensward contains more than twelve tons of vegetable matter, consisting of the roots and lops of grass, and other vegetable remains upon the surface. Such a method of ploughing, then, as will be best calculated to secure for the benefit of the crop, this mass of enriching substance, the farmer should not hesitate to adopt. By completely inverting the sward, and laying it as flat and smooth as the nature of the ground will admit, and then cultivating without disturbing the sod, with the application of a dressing of compost, land may not only be kept in heart, but wonderfully improved.
The Plough.–By so placing the coulter as to form acute angle with the plane of the share, on the land side, the beam is brought more directly over the centre of the plough, as is the case with Prouty & Mears’ improved plough, and thereby the power necessary to move it, is applied more directly to the centre of resistance, and the force required to move it, and overcome this resistance, is of course less than when applied, as in other ploughs, on one side.
The difference in the force required for ploughs now in use, has been ascertained to be 100 per cent.; showing the great importance of its structure. The work which one team of horses or one yoke of oxen can perform at one plough, will require two yoke at another!
