THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



47 



half-duiig and halt' artificial nurtures, or at least the 

 dung that has been made, to r.c divided over the 

 laud, to be sown aceording to its condition ; tlie re- 

 mainder being guano, and prepared on halt'-iuch 

 bones mixed, and sown with Garrett's manure-drill. 

 I never use any other. In covering the dung, care 

 ought to be taken to divide the ridges, so as to leave 

 it in the middle of the one to be formed. I never 

 use oval rollers, neither do I sow the artificial 

 manure and turnip seed on the same day the drills 

 are raised, if it be convenient to do otherwise, and 

 especially if the v/ealher be dry. 



Another description of second-class land is that 

 ■which has been down to grass for many years ; when 

 ploughed out and sown witli oats, it should only 

 have one crop taken before fallowing, however tougli 

 and cloddy it may be, but ought to be sown with 

 turnips, and to be eaten off by sheep, which process 

 would make it fit for further and better cultivation. 



Land of this description ought to have a liberal 

 supply of lime ])ut on in the month of April, previous 

 to sowing the second crop of turnips, instead of 

 being put upon the oat stubble in the autumn. 

 When lime is thus applied, it will either be ploughed 

 down too deep, or the land will be too lightly 

 ploughed, which ought not to be the case, as the 

 autumn ploughing, before fallowing, is of great im- 

 portance, it therefore ought to be done deep and 

 well ; moreover, when lime is applied in the autumn 

 or winter months, it is very apt to form into clods, 

 and can never again be so equally divided into small 

 parts, therefore a much larger quantity is required 

 to produce the same immediate effect ; when applied 

 in a powdery and caustic state, a smaller quantity 

 may suffice to cover the whole surface of the ground, 

 and come in contact with the more minute particles 

 of the soil. 



As there are only certain and few conditions in 

 which land can be made to receive lime to be bene- 

 fited by its application, it is therefore necessary to 

 know something about the condition of our land 

 before applying it, because where land has been 

 injudiciously cropped or insufficiently manured, a 

 heavy dose of lime will then certainly add to its 

 infertility. 



There is another class of land which might be im- 

 proved to become much more useful than in its 

 present condition, viz., unreclaimed. In breaking 

 up unimproved land, after draining, paring and burn- 

 ing are often resorted to — a practice which I woidd 

 not recommend, except that which is covered with 

 heath, a substance which ought never to be ploughed 

 down. I improved a field of very poor, sandy land, 

 covered over with short, unhealthy heath : it was 

 pared and burned in the summer, previous to its 

 being ploughed and sown with oats, which grew till 

 the middle of July, and then died off. It was again 

 plouglied a little deeper, in a contrary direction, 

 during the autumn following, which cut it into 

 squares. It was then wrought, but not very much, 

 during the following spring, for turnips, which were 

 manured with a very shglit dunging, 2 cwt. of guano 

 and f of a cwt. of prepared bones per acre, sown 

 with the drill ; the turnips were a regular crop, but 

 not large, and were fed off with sheep in the mouth 

 of October. The laud was then ploughed up into 

 large casts ; when, in April, it got seven fothers of 



lime per acre, and was again sown wiLii turnips iu 

 the first week of June, which were a good crop, and 

 consumed by sheep, as before, in October and No- 

 vember, The land was then ploughed, and sown 

 away to permanent pasture, without a corn crop ; 

 in the middle of AprU the grass-seeds were mixed 

 with a little I'ape, which made a very luxuriant pas- 

 ture. The annual rent of this field was a mere 

 acknowledgment, until the per-centage for draining 

 was added ; and yet it depastured and fattened more 

 sheep the first year it was in grass than a crop of 

 turnips would have done, and all land so laid away 

 ought and will. As the condition of that field im- 

 proved, I increased the doses of manure accord- 

 ingly ; and I am quite convinced that had the lime 

 been applied sooner than it was, it would have been 

 nearly wasted, as the land contained neither organic 

 nor putrescent matter, and very little of anything 

 else calculated to promote the growth of plants, and 

 thus a great deal of labour and capital would have 

 been wasted, and my purpose not effected. 



It may be thought that to raise so many green 

 crops without getting corn to take to the market 

 v/ould not repay the expense ; but we know what 

 marketable corn can be got from land worth from 

 Is. to 7s. or 8s. per acre. Although I grew no corn 

 on the field above mentioned, yet it produced crops 

 which left it in the best possible condition to lie to 

 pasture ; and, had it not been for the encourage- 

 ment which I received from my landlord, that por- 

 tion of the farm might have been still unimproved, 

 as my lease was nearly expired at the time it was 

 commenced with. 



In no farming operations will half-measures be 

 found to succeed ; and when a man has such an ob- 

 ject in view as laying down laud to produce crops 

 without further cultivation for a series of years, he 

 should calculate the loss that he will sustain if he 

 does not effect it in the most complete manner. 

 Another process of improving a pasture, covered 

 with coarse rough foggage, which had never been 

 ploughed before, was practised on a farm not many 

 miles distant from this place. It was drained two or 

 three years previous to its being ploughed, and was 

 sown with oats ; the next year it was ploughed aud 

 again sown ; and the third year it was well autumn- 

 ploughed, and in the month of March or April it got 

 a heavy dose of lime, hot from the kiln, whicli was 

 spread and well harrowed in, without having been 

 either stirred or cross- ploughed. The drills were 

 then formed of the loose soil upon the top, when the 

 turnips were sowu, along with artificial manure sown 

 with the drill, and were a most abundant crop. 

 They were partly taken oflF, and the remainder con- 

 sumed upon the land by sheep, when it was ploughed 

 the ordinary depth, and sown with corn aud perma- 

 nent grass-seeds, thus growing four abundant crops 

 with four ploughings, and it has been a good pasture 

 ever since. 



One author, writing on agriculture, says that a 

 farmer is not perfect in his business who cannot grow 

 to advantage three green crops for one of corn. The 

 last-mentioned method was exactly the very opposite, 

 making the difference very great. 



As it is each man's duty to consult his own inter- 

 est under the circumstances in which he may be 

 placed, it is. probably from the same cause which 



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