206 GRASSES AND FORAGE PLANTS. 



up to this time ; the grass increased from year to year so as to 

 cover most of the land in thirteen years. Ten years ago I com- 

 menced ploughing it. I ploughed about one acre and put on 

 fifteen loads of compost manure and planted it with corn. I 

 sowed it down in the fall with rye, Timothy and redtop, and 

 sowed clover in the spring, and about a bushel and a half of 

 plaster of Paris, per acre. The next year I ploughed another 

 part and manured it the same, except that I planted this with 

 melons, dunged in the hill, seven feet apart, and then sowed it 

 down in the fall the same as the other piece. The next year I 

 took up the remainder, and all the manure I put on the piece, 

 except in the hill, was the water carted on it from a hole in my 

 barnyard. It was immediately ploughed under, then holed and 

 dunged in the hill seven feet apart, planted with melons, and in 

 the fall sowed as the other parts. Since that it has continued 

 to bear very large grass. When I have turned my cattle into 

 it the first of June, I have judged, and others who have seen it, 

 that had I not pastured it I might have cut a ton to the acre. 

 The soil of this piece consists mostly of sand resting upon a 

 subsoil of gravel. Most of our pastures are spoiled by feeding 

 off too early in the spring and overstocking. Cattle should not 

 be turned in till the first of June, and then not overstocked, so 

 that there will always be spots of grass to go to seed, which will 

 keep the pasture well stocked with grass. Always keep your 

 pasture stocked with grass ; if you cannot keep it oil any other 

 way sow on Timothy and redtop and harrow it in, once a year. 

 I prefer to do it in August, 1)ut any other month in which you 

 are most at leisure, will do. 



Another experienced farmer says : " Old pastures should be 

 ploughed and planted when they arc not too rough for those 

 operations. They may then be seeded down in July among 

 corn or l)cans, or grain ma}' ho sown with the grass seed in the 

 following spring. But we have too much rough pasture unfit 

 for the plougli. It should never have ])een cleared for pastur- 

 ing, Ijut should have been left to run to wood. Such rough 

 lands are often much improved by sowing plaster at the rate of 

 two hundred pounds per acre. Plaster generally works well on 

 clays and clayey loams which are not wet." Another says : 

 " Where I have ploughed and planted old pastures and then 

 seeded anew, the cattle get a much Ijetter living." One of the 



