186 EXPERIMENTS OK MANURES. 



not ask for the Society's premium, has made within the last eighteen 

 months more than five hundred loads of compost manure. At times 

 when the ordinary work of the farm does not press, he employs his 

 laborers and team in carting into his barn and swine yards swamp 

 muck and peat ; this, after lying some months and imbibing the 

 droppings of his stock, is ploughed up, and after farther exposure 

 to their tramping and dropping, is thrown into heaps, where it lies 

 ready to be carried to the field. It is thought indispensable to have 

 the muck thoroughly rotten and decomposed. A piece of peat 

 as large and hard as a brick is as valueless for fertilizing pur- 

 poses as a stone of equal size ; but crumble it up, mix it with some 

 heating manure, and decompose it, and a load of peat compost is 

 worth more than a load of barn dung. When a sufficient quantity 

 of dung and urine has not been dropped in the yard upon the muck, 

 it is advisable to add more to the heap, and the farmer is well paid 

 for the additional labor of again forking over his manure ; the finer 

 and more snuffy it is made, the better it is adapted to furnish food to 

 the roots of plants. 



Another method of making compost is, to cart directly into the 

 field where it is intended to use it, your swamp muck or peat, and 

 there compost, by making first a layer of muck about four inches in 

 depth, then a layer of dung, — horse dung is decidedly the best for 

 this purpose, — and so on, till your heap is four or five feet in height, 

 being careful to cover the whole with muck or earth, so that the am 

 monia shall not escape. In making a compost, you may use one 

 load of dung to three or four of muck, just in proportion to the 

 strength of the manure. In ward weather, with twice faithful fork- 

 ing over, your compost will be ready for use in six or eight weeks, 

 (and this is timely for use in ths autumn,) but it is always essential 

 that the peat should be thoroughly decomposed. Such a compost 

 on loamy, gruvelly, and sandy soils, is better than clear manure for 

 crops of corn, potatoes, vegetables of any sort, and for rye, no ma- 

 nure surpasses it. 



But if you want a compost that will make your fields rejoice 

 with a luxuriant harvest, and that will be permanent in its effects, 

 to the muck and manure add ashes in the proportion of twenty -five 

 or thirty bushels to a cord of compost. But wood ashes and leached 

 ashes are too dear. That is true. And all the manure we purchase 

 in our countv costs as much, or more^ than in any other locality m 



