272 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sionally with plaster. I have made a fertilizer from bone at 

 different times, using oil of vitriol to decompose it. A good 

 and cheap fertilizer is made from two barrels of ground 

 bone, four barrels of hardwood ashes, one bushel of salt, and 

 seven pails of water, put into hogsheads in layers ; bone first, 

 then ashes and salt, lastly the water. On heavy or clay soil, 

 sand or gravel ploughed in is most excellent. I have used 

 salt for the last fifteen years ; put it on all of my manure- 

 heaps before being worked over, spreading it on, and har- 

 rowing it in, for onions, asparagus, cabbages, and potato-crop. 

 It is the only top-dressing I have ever used on grassland. I 

 have bought a car-load in a year ; but some years I do not 

 use more than fifty bushels : this is refuse salt. I do not haul 

 any loam under my barn to mix with the manure, but draw 

 from the stables in town dry manure, of which I usually get 

 a plenty. 



I use horse-manure on my dryer land, as it contains 

 moisture longer than any other kind. With me, it does not 

 pay to keep hogs, except enough to work over my manure, 

 and eat up the refuse from the house. 



Coal-ashes are worth hauling, I think, if not too far off. 

 Where I have used them in the hill for squashes, I have 

 been troubled very little with the borers. I have spaded 

 them in quite thick around my fruit-trees. I do not know 

 whether they keep off the canker-worms or not ; but I have 

 not been troubled with them, although they have been on 

 my neighbors' farms, adjoining mine, for ten years. I have 

 used salt hay, with no other fertilizer in the hill, for potatoes, 

 and get a good crop. 



For crops I plant a variety, then I am sure of having 

 some one or more that will pay ; and, if any one crop has 

 been a glut in the market this year, I should plant freely of 

 that kind next year. I raise altogether field-crops, as I am 

 away from the farm so much, that I cannot attend to hot- 

 beds, although I could have done much better*, could I have 

 attended to it, to have raised much under glass. I buy my 

 seed from the most reliable firm I can find, as it does not 

 pay to plant poor seed. Have bought for the last ten years 

 of Schlegel, Everett, & Co., and have hardly ever got any 

 poor seed from them. Some kinds I save myself, keeping 

 the best. I have planted potatoes in nearly all ways, but 



