AND HORTICULTURAL REGISTER. 



PUULISHED BY JOSEPH BRECK &; CO NO 52 NORTH MARK-b-t <5Tnc-i?T> /i w « .T,r,„, 

 "i-.v^n. «. v^w., 11W. a^ INUKIH MAKKtil bTKhET, (Agi!icui.tdeai Warehouse.)— ALLEN PUTNAM, EDITOR. 



VOL,. XIX.] 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, APRIL 28, 1841. 



N. E. FARMER 



[From 'Transactions of the Essex Agricultural Society.'] 

 ON EXPERIMENTS ON xMANURES. 



To the Trustees of the Essex A^iicullural Society: 



Gentlemkn — The committee to whom was re- 

 ferred the coinmtinication of Dr. Andrew Nicliols, 

 on the subject of compost manures, have at several 

 times visited his farm in Middleton, where he has 

 made experiments. The soil is naturally light, 

 and for many years has been severely cropped 

 without receiving much manure. The number of 

 livestock kept upon the farm is small, and but lit- 

 tle manure has been purchased. The distance 

 from any place where animal manure can be pur- 

 chased at a reasonable rate, seems almost to pre- 

 clude his means of obtaining it. Under such diffi- 

 culties Dr. Nichols has been very successful in the 

 manufacture and application of a compost, the in- 

 gredients of which are meadow mud, ashes and a 

 small proportion of animal manure. His success 

 has been e.^traordinary, as will be evident to any 

 one who knows the e.\hausted condition of the soil, 

 and who has witnessed the heavy crops it is made 

 to yield. 



In the application of liquid manure made from 

 meadow mud and potash. Dr. Nichols has been 

 less successful this year than in his last year's e.x- 

 perimenL A farther trial may establish or over- 

 throw his theory on this subject. We hope he 

 will continue his experiment, for it is of as much 

 consequence that farmers should know what appli- 

 cations are useless or hurtful, as what will produce 

 abundant harvests. 



The committee recommend that the communica- 

 tion of Dr. Nichols be published ; they also desire 

 him to furnish for publication, the analysis of the 

 mud, and an essay on the subject of peat mud, 

 muck, sand, &c., as promised in said communica- 

 tion, and they recommend that the Society pay Dr. 

 Nichols for his successful experiments, and valua- 

 ble communications, a gratuity of ten dollars. 

 For the Committee, 



DANIEL P. KING. 

 Danvers, Dec. 1840. 



ANDREW Nichols' statement. 

 To the Committee to whom was referred the communica- 

 nures &c ""^ ^'"='"''^' "" ""= subject of Compost Ma- 



GENTLEMEN—Having invited the attention of 

 the Trustees of the Essex Agricultur;il Society to 

 our continued use of, and experiments on, fresh 

 meadow or peat mud, as a manure, it is, of 

 course, expected that the result of these experi- 

 ments should be laid before Ihem. The compost 

 with which we planted most of our corn and pota- 

 toes the present year, was composed of the same 

 materials, and managed in the same manner as 

 that which we used last year for the same purpose. 

 (See Essex Agricultural Transactions for 1839, p. 

 35.) 



[Although Dr. Nichols' statement for '39 was 



two. 43. 



inserted in this paper last year, we have thought it | manure was never measured, but knowing how it 

 best to republish, because the subject is one of the | was made, by the droppings and litter or bedding 

 most important to the farming interests that at pre- ' of these cattle, farmers can estimate the quantity 

 sent engages the attention of agriculturists. The | with a good degree of correctness. These ashes 

 great desideratum is, a cheap and expeditious me- ; and this manure were mixed with a sufficient quan- 

 thod of rendering peat and muck food for plants. , tity of the mud above mentioned by forking it over 

 Dr. Nichols brings science, many years' careful ob- i three times, to manure three acres of corn and po- 

 servation, and a good stock of experience to bear j tatoes, in hills four feet by about three feet apart 

 upon the laws by which the growth of plants is ; givin;; a good shovel full to the hill. More than 

 carried on and increased. We s:iw his fields in ' two thirds of this was grassland, which produced 

 '39, and were satisfied that he then obtained good j laet year about half a ton of hay to the acre, broken 

 crops, at much less than the ordinary expense for | op by the plough in April. The remainder was 



^^^pp^^j 1^^^ ^^^^ without being well manured, with 

 corn and potatoes. Gentlemen, you have seen the 

 crop growing and matured, and I leave it to you to 

 say whether or not the crop on this land would 

 have been better had it been dressed with an equal 

 quantity of pure, well rotted barn manure. For 

 my own part, I believe it would not, but that this 

 experiment proves that peat mud thus managed, 

 is equal if not superior to the same quantity of any 

 other substiince in common use as a manure among 

 us ; which, if It be a fact, is a fact of immense val- 

 ue to the farmers of New England. By the knowl- 

 edge and use of it, our comparatively barren soils 

 may be made to equal or excel in productiveness 

 the virgin prairies of the west. There were many 

 hills in which the corn first planted was destroyed by 

 worms. A part of these were supplied with the small 

 Canada corn, a part with beans. The whole was 

 several times cut down by froi^t. The produce was 

 three hundred bushels of ears of sound corn, two tons 

 of pumpkins and squashes, and some potatoes and 

 beans. Dr. Dana, in his letter to Mr Colman, da- 

 ted Lowell, March 6, 1839, suggests the trial of a 

 solutionof geine as a manure. Misdirections for 

 preparing it are as follows: "Boil one hundred 

 pounds of dry pulverized peat with two and a half 

 pounds of white ash, (an article imported from Eng- 

 land,) containing 36 to 55 per cent, of pure soda, 

 or its equivalent in pearlash or potash, in a potash 

 kettle, with 130 gallons of water; boil for a few 

 hours, let it settle, and dip off the clear liquor for 

 use. Add the same quantity of alkali and water, 

 boil and dip off as before. The dark colored brown 

 solution contains about half an ounce per gallon of 

 vegatable matter. It is to be applied by watering 

 grain crops, grass lands, or any other way the far- 

 mer's quick wit will point out." 



In the month of June I prepared a solution of 

 geine, obtained not by boiling, but by steeping the 

 mud as taken from the meadow, in a weak lye in 

 tubs. I did not weigh the materials, being careful 

 only to use no more mud than the potash would 

 render soluble. The proportion was something 

 like this : peat 100 lbs., potash 1 lb., water 50 gal- 

 lons ; stirred occasionally for about a week, when 

 the dark brown solution, described by Dr. Dana 

 was dipped off and applied to some rows of corn, a 

 portion of a piece of starved barley, and a bed of 

 onions sown on land not well prepared for tliat 

 crop. The corn was a portion of the piece manur- 

 ed as above mentioned. On this the benefit was 

 not so obvious. The crop of barley on the portion 

 watered, was more than double the quantity both 



manure. — Ed.] 



Dr. Mchots' Statement o/ 1839. 

 Persuaded of the importance of the discoveries 

 made by Dr. Samuel L. Dana, of Lowell, and giv- 

 en to the world through the medium of the reports 

 of Professor Hitchcock and Rev. H. Colman, to 

 the Legislature of Massachusetts, concerning the 

 food of vegetables, geine, and the abundance of it 

 in peat mud, in an insoluble state to be sure, and 

 in that state not readily absorbed and digested by 

 the roots of cultivated vegetables, but rendered 

 soluble and very easily digestible by such plants 

 by potash, wood ashes, or other alkalies, among 

 which is ammonia, one of the products of ferment- 

 ing animal manures, I resolved last year to subject 

 his theories to the test of experiment the present 

 season. Accordingly I directed a quantity of black 

 peat mud, procured by ditching for the purpose of 

 draining and reclaiming an alder swamp, a part of 

 which I had some years since brought into a state 

 highly productive of the cultivated grasses, to be 

 thrown in heaps. During the winter I also had 

 collected in Salem, 282 bushels of unleached wood 

 ashes, at the cost of 12 1-2 cents per bushel. These 

 were sent up to my farm, a part to be spread on my 

 black soil grass lands, and a part to be mixed with 

 mud for my tillage land. Two hundred bushels of 

 these were spread on about six acres of such grass 

 land, while it was covered with ice and frozen hard 

 ei^ough to be carted over without cutting it into 

 ruts. These lands produced from one to two tons 

 of good merchantable hay to the acre, nearly dou- 

 ble the crop produced by the same lands last year. 

 And one fact induces me to think, that being spread 

 on the ice, as above mentioned, a portion of these 

 ashes was washed away by the spring freshet. The 

 fact from which I infer this, is, that a run below, 

 over which the water coming from the meadow on 

 which the largest part of these ashes wen; spread 

 flows, produced more than double the quantity of 

 hay, and that of a very superior quality to what 

 had been ever known to grow on the same land be- 

 fore. 



Seventy bushels of these ashes, together with a 

 quantity not exceeding thirty bushels of mixed coal 

 and wood ashes made by my kitchen and parlor 

 tires, were mixed with my barn manure, derived 

 from one horse kept in stable the whole year, one 

 other horse kept in stable during the winter months, 

 one cow kept tlirough__the wiater, and one pair of 

 oxen employed almost daily on the road and in the 

 woods, but fed in the barn one hundred days. This 



