211 HOW TO MAKE THE FARM PAY. 



should be applied to the preceding crop, and not to tho 

 cotton itself. By the above system of Dr. Cloud, on many plan- 

 tations, five hundred bushels of compost manure to the acre 

 may well be made before March comes. Look at it. Straw, 

 leaves, weeds, muck, peat, the droppings solid and liquid of 

 your well fed stock, your poultry, and your family, what an in- 

 exhaustible mine of treasures; and then the value of all these can 

 be doubled by the addition of a few dollars' worth of lime, or by 

 saving your ashes, and by putting sulphuric acid on your bones. 



Supposing then there are five hundred bushels for each acre of 

 cotton. " Mark off the field with a scooter plow, (unless the old 

 lines are visible,) the first line fifteen feet from the boundary, 

 and the others thirty feet apart. On these lines or rows deposit 

 the manure in heaps of ten bushels each. This is easily done 

 by having the capacity of the cart twenty bushels and dropping 

 half for the first heap, and dumping the balance for the second. 

 In this way the manure is distributed at the rate of five hundred 

 bushels to the acre. This will produce very thrifty plants, and 

 the rows should be at least five feet wide." Cover the manure 

 lightly at the first plowing. 



Planting. The seed should be soaked in a weak solution 

 of stable manure, water and salt, and then rolled in lime, ashes, 

 and guano— or in plaster, which is preferable, as the seeds then 

 show more plainly in the drill. Thirty pounds to the acre is 

 recommended; but with perfect seed, prepared as above, and 

 evenly sowed by drill or by hand, one half this amount is 

 abundantly sufacient. We have known twice this amount, 

 or sixty pounds to the acre, sown, without producing plants 

 enough for a stand. The seed to be used for planting should be 

 the best, cleaned of fibre as much as possible, and carefully 

 housed. The great piles of cotton seed lying about the gin 

 houses through the winter, furnish very uncertain seed. "Im 



