Ko. 13. 



Hints for March — Ploiighini 



217 



this animal at this season ; but if you have no 

 such range, potatoes and carrots, (not tur- 

 neps,) may be used as a substitute. Secure 

 them carefully against your grain, mowing, 

 or young clover grounds, which you design 

 for mowing; the damage they will do you by 

 feeding on these, would be greater than they 

 could repay. 



Some farmers complain that red clover, 

 when sown for mowing upon their orchard 

 grounds, causes the trees to wither and de- 

 cay. This may be remedied by sowing plas- 

 ter of Paris upon your clover; your orchards 

 will flourish as well as upon English mowing ; 

 one bushel to the acre m the spring, or fall, 

 annually, will answer. It is of no conse- 

 quence to inquire, why a crop so fertilizing 

 as clover, should injure the orchard, nor why 

 the plaster should prevent it; facts are stub- 

 born things, and are generally, all that are of 

 importance in good farming. Others have 

 found from experience that red clover may 

 grow to advantage upon orchard grounds, 

 without injuring the trees, provided the clo- 

 ver is fed off before it blossoms; and thus fer- 

 tilize their orchard grounds by feeding their 

 clover. From this it appears, that the in- 

 jury arises from the heads, or blossoms of 

 the clover; but the manner in which the 

 blossom produces this effect, is again inexpli- 

 cable, and so in fact are all the operations of 

 nature. One useful fact that shall enable 

 the farmer to produce two spires of grass 

 where only one had grown before, is of more 

 real value, than a whole volume of nice phi- 

 losophical disquisitions upon the operation of 

 nature, in producing this grass; the first may 

 be done; but the latter no man ever discover- 

 ed, and probably never will. 



PLOUGHING. 



The season is now opening to commence 

 your ploughing; every farmer, and every 

 tiirmer's boy, feels perhaps as if he knew 

 how to hold and drive the plough, better tlian 

 the man who writes ; all this may be true ; 

 he knows that he should never turn his fur- 

 row wider than the plough-share will cut 

 clean ; but always as much narrower, as the 

 stiffness of the soil shall render necessary, to 

 lay his furrows smooth and light, and free 

 from clods ; in all such cases of narrow fur- 

 rows, the extra expense of ploughing, will be 

 saved in the expense of harrowing, with this 

 advantage to the crop, that the harrow pul- 

 verizes only the surface; but the plough, 

 when properly directed, renders the earth 

 mellow, to the whole depth of the furrow. — 

 This again involves the question, how deep 

 is best? To this I shall reply particularly, as 

 it has become one of the most important 

 questions in field husbandry. When you 

 turn in a stiff, or clover sward, for corn, or 

 potatoes, let your plough cut to the depth of j 



8 or 10 inches, if the substratum is not an im- 

 penetrable substance ; you will thus lay tlie 

 foundation tor a deep soil for ever, in your 

 af\er tillage. Your corn, and potatoes, when 

 planted, will lie below the dead earth raised 

 trom the bottoms of your furrows, and will 

 strike their roots into the rich mould which 

 you turned down from the surface. The sun, 

 air, and rains, together with such manure as 

 you may apply, either in the hill, or by way 

 of top-dressings, about the hills, will all fer- 

 tilize the dead earth so turned up, and render 

 it food for plants. The frosts of the next 

 winter will further improve this dead sur- 

 face, and thus, by the next season, when 

 commixed with original mould, by a deep 

 ploughing of the same depth, the whole will 

 become a deep, rich, and fertile soil, and may 

 ever afterward be ploughed to the same 

 depth for the culture of any crops. The 

 same is true, in a degree, of stubbie grounds, 

 plf.iighed, or ridged in, in the summer, after 

 harvest; or of turnep ground fed by sheep, or 

 of clover, or buck-wheat grounds, ploughed 

 in, as fertilizing crops; but where you plough 

 your fallows tor wheat, rye, oats, barley, or 

 turneps, you will never succeed in deepening 

 your soil below the natural mould, unless you 

 have first begun as above; because these 

 crops strike a shallow root, and will be left 

 to teed on the dead earth which you have 

 brought up to tlie surface. These are the 

 outlines, or first principles of good ploughing, 

 and the minute attention of every farmer, 

 will soon discover the mode whicii shall be 

 best adapted to his different soils, and differ- 

 ent crops, with this general principle, to 

 deepen his soil at every ploughing, as tar as 

 the nature of the substratum, or undersoil, 

 and the safety of his crop will admit; and there- 

 fore in this way, he may soon bring his farm 

 into a deep tillage. The success of one half 

 of any one of his fields, under a regular deep 

 tillage, compared with the other half under a 

 shallow tillage, will be the most convincing 

 argument in favor of deep ploughing, that 

 can be laid before the practical farmer. Try 

 and see. 



This being the life of a farm, it is impossi- 

 ble to be too particular in improving it. I 

 shall conclude this article with the following 

 remarks. 



1. The depth of your soil being determin- 

 ed as before, plough flat, or ridge, directly 

 according to the nature of your soil. 



2. If your soil is naturally dry, plough flat, 

 and as level as possible, this will give an 

 equal diffusion of moisture throughout your 

 field; but if your soil is moist, plough into 

 wide ridges of 18 to 24 feet, and if it is a 

 wet soil, let your ridges not exceed 6 to 12 

 feet. The object of ridge ploughing, is to 

 improve the furrows between the ridges, as 



