1841). 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



279 



poor lands, which have been injured by excessive 



cropping, and improving such ns are naturally defec- 

 tive, the subject is very little understood. I have in 



my eye an old field which was scratched with the 

 "bull tongue" plow and the hoe, a little longer than 

 any crop would grow, and till its surface was as bare 

 the year round, as the desert of Sahara. A thin, 

 spindling grass, a few stunted weeds and young 

 pines, have begun the work of making a new soil on 

 this sterile waste. In this natural process of reno- 

 vation. thejTMM is the king of plants. Nature has 

 provided its seed with an apparatus which serves the 

 the same office performed by the down on the seed of 

 thistles, t. <■., to enable it to be borne a great distance 

 by winds in all directions. The seed of the pine no 

 sooner germinates, than it extends its small tap root 

 deep into the ground, in search of a very little of the 

 alkalies and alkaline earths, without which it can not 

 organize carbon and the elements of water into woody 

 fibre. Supplied at first with two green leaves and a 

 small root, and mainly from nutriment stored up in 

 the parent seed, it is prepared to perform the legiti- 

 mate functions of all growing plants, viz: to decom- 

 pose carbonic acid and water by the aid of solar light, 

 and with a little available nitrogen, potash, etc., to 

 organize its tissues and gain in weight and substance. 

 In forming ten pounds of common pine wood, nature 

 deposits in its tissues, and consumes from the earth, 

 not more soluble salts, or ashes, than can be got from 

 a single pipe full of tobacco. And yet, wonderl'ull 

 to tell, I find four per cent of ash in the dry leaf of 

 the long-leaf pine. But all these numerous and 

 weighty leaves annually fall on the surface of the 



ground, to rot and form what? Why, a mould, 



rich in organized carbon; rich in salts of lime, potash 

 and magnesia; the former taken from the atmosphere, 

 and the latter from the subsoil. 



Here is the first letter of the alphabet in the science 

 and the philosophy of accumulating bread and meat 

 in the surface soil. Study the ways of Providence; 

 wisely imitate His example, and a barren plain can 

 be converted into a fruitful garden. The pine is an 

 evergreen, and grows the year round. 



The first thing I did when I came to Georgia, a 

 year and a half ago, and saw the extreme nakedness 

 of the land, was to reccommend the seeding with rye, 

 at the last plowing in cornfields, or soon after the crop 

 ceases to grow, with a view to have this winter plant 

 gather up from August till March, whatever availa- 

 ble atoms might b^within reach of its roots and 

 leaves. As the earth does not freeze, and heavy, 

 washing rains fall in winter, "the fat of the land" is 

 largely consumed, and is either lost, like a burned 

 candle, in the atmosphere, or carried like water from 

 a dung heap, into ditches and "branches." Barley, 

 oats, and wheat, all do well here sown in November 

 or December. It is now the 6th of February, 1849, 

 and I have this day seen a field of oats which has been 

 cut in part for soiling, for some weeks. Another in 

 barley, is so stout as to fall down or lodge. 



Winter pastures of rye are very valuable for stock 

 of all kinds, although there are some clayey soils that 

 the treading of cattle and sheep injures. 



Acting on my theory of keeping the earth always 

 covered with some growing vegetatien, Mr. M. B. 

 Moore, of this city, (Augusta) raised last season 34J 

 bushels of wheat from one ot seed, which was har- 

 vested about the 20th of May; then a crop of hay, 

 equal to a ton and a half to the acre, which was 

 mown in August; and then a crop of peas which was 



harvested in November; all from the same land. The 

 land is now in wheat, to be harvested in May next, 

 as before. There is no difficulty in growing three 

 crops of small grain in a year at the South, il one is 

 cut green for hay, as oats, peas, barley and rye are 

 often cut. To enrich the soil, I assume that the ma- 

 nure derived from both the grain and straw, or of the 

 green crops is all carefully saved and duly applied to 

 the land. As about 60 per cent, of the hay and other 

 food eaten by a cow, sheep or horse, is lost in vapor 

 and carbonic acid, thrown out of the lungs, in the 

 process of breathing, and through the pores of the 

 skin in insensible perspiration, one will increase or- 

 ganic matter in a poor soil much faster to plow in 

 clover, peas, timothy and rye, than to feed these t'> 

 domestic animals, and apply all their excretions to 

 the land. 



I am well aware that clover has long been used ln 

 connection with wheat culture, to enrich cultivated 

 earth. It was a knowledge of this that led me to 

 believe that to sow rye in corn, potato an 1 oat fields 

 in autumn, to be plowed in for the feeding of the next 

 summer crop, would be useful any where, north or 

 south. I find that a kernel of rye will organise from 

 October till the first of April, a plant which when 

 dry, will weigh 100 times more than the parent seed. 

 I call this gain of 99 parts for one, cheap manure, 

 which is already erenly spread over the rye field, and 

 ready for the plow in the spring. A man's farm is in 

 truth a chemical laboratory; and he should study to 

 turn the frosts of winter, the sunshine of summer, 

 the rains of spring and the dews of autumn, to the 

 best possible advantage. Very late plowing to freeze 

 compact earths, and very early seeding, are worthy 

 of attention at the North. I am in favor of pretty 

 thick seeding and planting, partly as a better cover- 

 ing and protection to the soil, and partly because I 

 have generally found the best practical farmers to 

 concur in recommending it. Under our present ex- 

 hausting system of tillage, there is far more land un- 

 der the plow in the United States than is really de- 

 sirable or profitable. The correction of the evil of 

 running over a great deal of surface to produce a 

 little corn, wheat, cotton or tobacco, is not to be ex- 

 pected during the life-time of the present generation. 

 Boys may be made to understand that it is much 

 cheaper to make 500 bushels of corn on ten than on 

 one hundred acres; but few men forty years old that 

 practice the exhausting system now, will ever pur- 

 sue any other. Talk to them about carbon and the 

 subsoil, and they will soon fill both ears with cotton. 

 Persons twenty years younger, are generally willing 

 to learn why 100 lbs. of pea vines will make richer 

 vegetable mould than a like weight of bullrushes. 

 Seeing that an acre of tilled soil, which gives but 15 

 bushels of corn, has the same sunshine, and an equal 

 amount of rain and of atmospheric gases that fall 

 upon an acre that yields 60 bushels, young men will 

 study closely the slight, difference in the two soils in 

 their mechanical texture, the solubility of their fer- 

 tilising atoms, and in the abundance or scarcity of 

 each constituent element. If tillage, as an art, was 

 all that is required to give abundant harvests, then 

 equal culture should be followed by equal crops on 

 fields that produce, the one five and the other fifty 

 bushels per acre. No uniformity and thoroughness 

 of tilth can work a uniformity in the growth of plants 

 in soils that unequally abound in the precise things 

 demanded by nature to organise the crop. To aid in 

 decomposing insoluble silicates of potash, and in 



