MANUEE8 AND MAKUKIXQ. 



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with our own soils can afford an unerring and perfectly reliable guide. This we have 

 found true in our own practice. "\Ve have no hope, therefore, in being able to write 

 anything that every man may carry out to advantage, and will merely aim at directing 

 attention to certain well established facts and principles that may aid in putting the 

 inexperienced on the proper course. 



One great error, and, as we believe, a very prevalent one, is that of applying the 

 same kind of manure to the same soil for a great number of years in succession. "We 

 will take, for instance, town and village gardens, and see how the case is with them. 

 A cow and a horse, and perhaps a pig, are kept on the premises, and whatever manure 

 they may produce, or such a quantity of it as may be considered necessary, is annually 

 applied to the garden without any admixture of other material, and, in most cases, 

 without being very properly prepared beforehand. At the same time, the ground is 

 cropped with the same articles year after year witli very slight variations. By and 

 by the crops begin to fail ; and the wonder is ivhy, with such a liberal manuring every 

 year*. But it is not at all wonderful. We have seen lime, marl, sea-weed, and other 

 fertilizers produce the most abundant crops for a few years, and then cease to have 

 any good effect, but rather to be injurious. Thousands of gardens are defective, not 

 from the want of manure, but from the too frequent application of one material. 

 People are not thoughtful or careful enough in saving the waste materials of gardens 

 and kitchens to add to the manure heap. The more vegetable refuse that can be 

 returned to the garden, the less will strong animal manures be needed. Leaves, the 

 dry stalks and waste parts of vegetables, weeds, mowings and sweepings of lawns, 

 prunings of trees, clippings of hedges, if thrown in a heap and mixed with a little 

 manure, lime, turf from an old pasture, muck, or peat, (fee, would make one of the 

 very best composts for gardens, whatever might be the character of the soil or the 

 crops grown on it. They return to the soil the very same substances of which it has 

 been deprived by crops, together with others taken from the atmosphere. Such a 

 compost is far preferable to strong stable manure, for trees especially, and may be 

 applied with entire safety even in fertile soils, where it might be considered that 

 manure of any kind was wholly unnecessary. The finest garden crops, and the most 

 vio-orous, healthy, and fruitful trees we know of, are those of poor cottagers who keep 

 no animals and have no manure but such as they scrape up in the form of refuse. 

 Their necessities compel them to follow a system of preparing manure that every one 

 should adopt from choice. A dressing of wood-ashes occasionally is of great value. 

 The alkali they contain is not only useful to the soil, but destructive to grubs that 

 infest it. Soot is also valuable in this respect, and it is a point of some importance ; 

 for when animal manures alone have been plentifully applied for a number of years, 

 grubs become so numerous as to render the garden nearly worthless. The best way 

 to apply these substances is, to spread them over the ground in the fell or winter, and 

 spade them under ; before spring comes they are rendered perfectly harmless. Bones, 

 either in a fresh state or from the glue factory, make a valuable application to gardens, 

 and especially to fruit trees. If ground to a powder, or dissolved in sulphuric 

 they produce an immediate effect ; but if simply broken in pieces, or spaded in 



