338 FAEMERS' INSTITUTES. 



eight or nine years ago I was in a store in Eoscommon, and they said they 

 had some spurry seed sent to exjseriment with on these plains lands. I took 

 a pinch home with me and planted it among some turnips in the corner of a 

 piece of new breaking where there had never been any manure. After a 

 while I noticed there was something green there which grew up rank and 

 rich about a foot high right there in the rutabagas. I let it alone and the 

 next season I found it had increased. It staid in the ground there for a 

 number of years, but finally disappeared. 



Dr. Kedzie: President Willits has asked the difference between muck and 

 peat. Muck that is valuable for manure can be crumbled to a powder, andia 

 found on the surface. Below it is a substance that will stick to your fingers 

 like cheese or tar, and yet lower down is a brownish black sphagnum which 

 would never decompose. The substance on top is what you should use. If 

 you take the other material, the tarry material, and leave it on the ground it 

 will dry almost as hard as coal; it will lie there for ten years and be as far as 

 it was at the beginning from decomposition. It is not soft usually unless it 

 is soaking wet. 



Mr. Shriver: I would like to ask which would be the best green manure 

 where we can't get clover to start; whether it would be buckwheat or rye? 



Dr. Kedzie: I would prefer rye. 



Mr. : Would you plow in the muck and manure compost in the 



spring or fall? 



Dr. Kedzie: Any time, only be sure to apply it sometime. 



President Willits: And mix it up well. 



Mr. Rose: I experimented with muck or marl three years ago and four 

 years ago and got the finest results I had on my farm. 



Mr. Webber: I would like to ask Dr. Kedzie what would be the effect 

 upon the frostiness of the land of the use of this muck mixed with the 

 sand? 



Dr. Kedzie : It would generally make the land less frosty than it would 

 be without it. In the experiment I have carried on for five or six years, testing 

 the temperature three times each day at 7 o'clock in the morning, two 

 o'clock in the afternoon and 9 o'clock at night; the soil was uniformly 

 warmer by two and a half degrees than other pieces right by it witL ..iL the 

 muck. 



Mr. Thurber: I would like to ask Dr. Kedzie how to get rid of sorrel? 



Dr. Kedzie: Kill it. Hoe it out. There is no medicine that will kill it. 

 I don't believe clover will tcuch it. So far as I can see the only way is ta 

 procure the growth of something else that will crowd out the sorrel. 



Mr. : I want to know if our tamarack and cedar swamps will pro- 

 duce valuable muck? 



Dr. Kedzie : Certainly. Almost any swamp or beaver pond will furnish 

 it; any place where vegetable matter has partially decomposed under water. 

 The value for manure is about the same wherever it is formed. Even sub- 

 stances that are not particularly rich in nitrogen when they are partially 

 decomposed become effective from having the nitrogen that is in them 

 brought into available condition. 



What is the sense in buying commercial fertilizers if you have these natural 

 nitrogen banks of deposit ready to your hand? 



President Willits: What would you say of the practice of burning off a 

 swamp in order to cultivate it? 



