THE FARMER'S MANUAL. 



herbage is the most natural feed for this animal at this 

 season ; but if you have no such range, potatoes and 

 carrots, (not turnips,) may be used as a substitute. 

 Secure them carefully against your grain, mowing, or 

 young clover grounds, which you design for mowing, 

 the damage they will do you by feeding on these, 

 would be greater than they could repay. 



Some farmers complain that red clover, when sown 

 for mowing upon their orchard grounds, causes the 

 trees to wither and decay. This may be remedied by 

 sowing plaster of -Paris upon your clover ; your or- 

 chards will flourish as well as upon English mowing; 

 one bushel to the acre in the spring, or fall, annually, 

 will answer. It is of no consequence to inquire, why 

 a crop so fertilizing as clover, should injure the or- 

 chard, nor why the plaster should prevent it; facts 

 are stubborn things, and are generally, all that are of 

 importance in good farming. Others have found 

 from experience that red clover may grow to ad- 

 vantage upon orchard grounds, without injuring the 

 trees, provided the clover is fed off before it blos- 

 soms ; and thus fertilize their orchard grounds by feed- 

 ing their clover. From this it appears, that the in- 

 jury arises from the heads, or blossorrfl of the clover ; 

 but the manner in which the blossom produces this 

 effect, is again inexplicable, and so in fact are all the 

 operations of nature. One useful fact that shall ena- 

 ble the farmer to produce two spires of grass where 

 only one had grown before, is of more real value, 

 than a whole volume of nice philosophical disquisi- 

 tions upon the operations of nature, in producing 

 this grass ; the first may be done ; but the latter no 

 man ever discovered, and probably never will. 



Ploughing* 



The season is now opening to commence your 



ploughing; every farmer, and even farmer's boy, 



feels as if he knew how to hold and drive plough, bet- 



#er than the man who writes books ; all this may be 



