208 Our Farming. 



ence, only that it would be cruelty to the horses to half feed them. 

 It is not direct cruelty to animals to starve the land, but indirectly 

 it causes pretty hard times among the humans that live on the 

 income. Half-way work is bad all around, friends, any way you 

 can look at it. But how are we to feed the crops like this, practi- 

 cally ? You would not have us pay out all our money for fertil- 

 izers, would you ? No. Sometimes the addition of a little phos- 

 phoric acid may pay you, or potash to help clover grow, but I 

 can only advise in the lines that I have followed. I have seen my 

 own wheat yield work gradually up onto a paying basis without 

 buying any fertilizers. If you have read thus far you will see all 

 the steps that have led to this, but it will do no harm to repeat 

 them as connected with wheat culture. The great source of food 

 for wheat on my farm comes from clover growing in regular rota- 

 tion, in connection, of course, with careful manure saving. Even 

 at the present low prices, we can make money growing wheat in 

 rotation with clover and some other crop suitable to the 

 farm. It is potatoes, you know, with us. It might be corn on 

 some farms. No fertilizers are needed then. A clover sod may be 

 turned under directly for wheat ; but it is not as well as to grow a 

 crop of corn or potatoes first and then put in the wheat. There 

 is most too much nitrogen in the clover, if the growth was heavy, 

 for wheat to follow. The growth of straw is too great, and the 

 wheat lodges and yield of grain is not up to expectations. Our 

 best farmers are generally settled on this point. I find almost too 

 much nitrogen after growing a crop of potatoes first, where the 

 second growth of clover is turned under. It is the same where 

 manure is applied directly to the crop here. My next neighbor 

 has a piece badly down. He put the manure on the clover in the 

 spring for potatoes, and then drilled wheat in in the fall The 

 manure got rotten just about in time for the wheat, and has given 

 it most too much nitrogen. The worst piece of lodged wheat 

 I ever had came from manuring potato ground in the spring in 

 this same way, and a dry season following so the potatoes used 

 little of the manure. I prefer to use the manure to grow the 

 clover. It is safer. A common practice here is to keep manure 

 over till fall for wheat. Where kept without loss and spread 

 thinly over the surface after plowing to help the growth of grass 

 and clover, I would not object to the plan particularly, but 

 believe mine is better, unless land is so thin that a good stand can- 

 not be had without top dressing, which may be the case on some 

 thin clay soils. 



I do not believe there is any better preparation for wheat than 

 a thoroughly worked potato field, which had been a heavy clover 

 sod the year before. Possibly a summer fallow might show as 

 good returns, but it would not be as practicable, as the income 

 from potatoes would be lost. Further south, where the season is 

 longer, wheat after clover and corn would be, perhaps, nearly as 



