1847.] Long Island Farming. 45 



LONG ISLAND FARMING, AND THE EXPENSE OF 

 RECLAIMING MARSHLANDS. 



BY THOMAS P. YOUNGS. 



I have fonvarded you one box containing specimens of the soil 

 from my farm. Some ears of corn and ore which I hope you have 

 received, and are according to your wishes; each package is la- 

 belled, and is as follows: 



One from a tield that has been under cultivation for a great 

 number of years, and for the last twenty or thirty years, as follows: 

 first plowing sward that has been in grass for five or six years; 

 and planting corn in hills, five or six grains in each, and some 

 four feet apart, manuring at the rate of twenty to twenty-five 

 wagon loads stable manure per acre, or twenty-five to thiity loads 

 street diit from the city ot New York; sometimes spreading on 

 after plowing and manuring in hills also, and sometimes without 

 putting any in the hills; product forty to fifty bushels per acre. 

 The next season we plowed the corn stubble and some oats, two 

 bushels per acre, without manure; product forty to sixty bushels 

 per acre. Fall of the same year we again plow the oat stubble 

 twice, and sow wheat, one and a half bushels to the acre, manur- 

 ing with stable manure, twenty-five wagon loads per acre, sowing 

 three to six quarts Timothy seed per acre, after the first harrow- 

 ing, which is covered by the second harrowing, which is done 

 immediately after the first. In the spring, say March, we sow 

 six pounds Clover seed per acre; the product of wheat twenty to 

 twenty-five bushels per acre; the next two or three years we keep 

 for hay mowing, two tons per acre; it is then pastured for one or 

 two years or occasionally mowed another year, and then pastured 

 as found desirable, plowing again for corn after having been 

 in grass from five to six yeais. When the same rotation of ctop 

 commences, this I consider a good rotation for crops of our till- 

 able land, and is probably the best considering its nature and the 

 means we enjoy for obtaining manure. 



Four specimens from swamp or now meadow-land, marked as 

 we describe them, say high bog and low bog, of which the greater 

 part consists, say three-quarters blue clay near the upland, sand 

 clay adjoining the upland, (small proportion,) of this description 

 I have in all about thirty acres which I have reclaimed Irom a 

 useless piece of swamp, covered with bogs, alders, briars, grape, 

 &.C., &c., almost an impassible thicket, and mud, and mire. I 

 commenced six years since, by ditching round the whole piece, 

 hree cross ditches to carry off all the water, and about three to 

 QUI' feet deep, and all left opeu^ and have been cleaned out every 



