704' Retrospective Criticism, 



manure and top dress them, and dig them in half, full grown, and ripe. I 



do so in my garden with great success.* 



I shall not now say much of my own farm, as any detailed account would 

 be unintelligible and unsatisfactory, for many reasons, and not altogether 

 belonging to your journal. My present purpose is to direct the attention 

 of horticulturists to vegetable manures. 



Nine years ago, my farm was almost a caput mortunm^ owing to 

 unusually bad management long continued. One of my neighbours, a 

 farmer by intuition, a Minerva born, learned at all points, said lately to 

 one of my pupils: — " It will be so again in five years." Query, — If 

 this system has put my farm on the road to matchless fertility from utter 

 exhaustion in a iew years, by what scorpion process is it to destroy it in 

 five more ? Have you any IVIinervas in England now ? They are far more 

 plentiful here than rattlesnakes, and far more mischievous : the latter bite 

 only when injured. I have reached 70 bushels of Indian corn per acre ; next 

 year I fully expect 100 or more. Indian corn rather exceeds beans in Eng- 

 land, the land being equal. I raise finer crops of Swedish turnips here than I 

 ever saw in England or Scotland, or grew myself in England. They have 

 never once failed in the nine years. I sow them after wheat and barley, the 

 same season. My farm is 100 acres ; about 75 under the plough ; the rest in 

 grass. My rotation is eight years, growing in that time eighteen to twenty 

 crops (in the southern states much more might be done), above one half 

 harvested, and the remainder ploughed in; all the rest is in strict ac- 

 cordance with English and Scotch principles. I have now growing the 

 fourth crop this season in some of my fields. It is not what crops we 

 grow, it is the use we put them to, that does good or evil. I shall make 

 this season yard manure sufficient for 45 or 50 acres. I could manure my 

 whole farm annually by eating all my Indian corn (18 acres, and not selling 

 any straw, next year I begin to sell it), with 18 acres of tm'nips and other 

 crops. This could hardly be done in any country in which Indian corn 

 will not grow, with turnips as a second crop. This system leads me to the 

 belief that all crops are exhausters and improvers (independently of their 

 subsequent application), just in proportion to what they take out of the 

 soil (if one crop really takes more than another), and what bulk and quality 

 of roots they leave behind. This I take to be the true solution of the old 

 doctrine of rest ; which signifies an accumulation of vegetable matter in the 

 soil ; which when man destroys, barrenness is the result. Clover is con- 

 sidered one of the best improvers ; and so it is : yet it is one of the greatest 

 exhausters, until its roots are decayed, as are all grasses and green crops. 

 I have top-dressed clover in the spring with yard manure ; mowed the first 

 crop ; ploughed in the second ; sowed turnips, which were very poor ; the 

 succeeding crops, rye and corn, were excellent. I plant Indian corn for 

 green fodder, after harvest, in June and July, on wheat and rye stubbles, and 

 after a second crop of clover ploughed in. After the wheat and rye the corn 

 comes up dark, healthy, and vigorous ; after the clover, yellow, sickly, and 

 unthrifty, but recovers. The succeeding crops after the clover are superior. 

 In both instances the corn grows from 7 ft. to 10 ft. high. The ears 

 form well, but do not ripen, making most excellent food. The pigs steal 

 the ears, whilst the steers and cows eat the blades (leaves). Wheat, bar- 

 ley, &c., absorb what is in their roots in ripening; clover, tm-nips, &c., being 

 not permitted to ripen, do not. Indian corn, horsebeans, Sec, cut par- 



* We wish this ingenious writer could see the fruit tree borders in his 

 brother's garden at Longford, near Manchester, noticed p. 542., and com- 

 pare them with the fruit trees where the borders are dug and cropped as 

 he advises. — Cond. 



