94 The Agricultural Papers of George Washington 



it will grow well; but is subject to the same bug which per 

 forates the garden pea, and eats out the kernel. So It will 

 happen, I fear, with the pea you propose to import. I had 

 great expectation from a green dressing with buckwheat, as 

 a preparatory fallow for a crop of wheat, but it has not an 

 swered my expectation yet. I ascribe this, however, more 

 to mismanagement in the times of seeding and ploughing in, 

 than any defect of the system. The first ought to be so 

 ordered, in point of time, as to meet a convenient season for 

 ploughing it in, while the plant is in its most succulent state. 

 But this has never been done on my farms, and consequently 

 has drawn as much from, as it has given to the earth. It 

 has always appeared to me that there were two modes in 

 which buckwheat might be used advantageously as a manure. 

 One, to sow early, and, as soon as a sufficiency of seed is 

 ripened, to stock the ground a second time, to turn the whole 

 in, and when the succeeding growth is getting in full bloom, 

 to turn that in also, before the seed begins to ripen; and, 

 when the fermentation and putrifaction ceases, to sow the 

 ground in that state, and plough in the wheat. The other 

 mode is, to sow the buckwheat so late, as that it shall be gen 

 erally about a foot high at the usual seeding of wheat ; then 

 turn it in, and sow thereon immediately, as on a clover lay, 

 harrowing in the seed lightly to avoid disturbing the buried 

 buckwheat. I have never tried the latter method, but see 

 no reason against its succeeding. The other, as I observed 

 above, I have prosecuted, but the buckwheat has always stood 

 too long, and consequently had got too dry and sticky to 

 answer the end of a succulent plant. 



But of all the improving and ameliorating crops, none in 

 my opinion is equal to potatoes, on stiff and hard bound 

 land, as mine is. I am satisfied, from a variety of instances, 

 that on such land a crop of potatoes is equal to an ordinary 



