No. 4. 



Renovation of the Soil. 



127 



uncovered and unmixed ; they will then serve 

 to enrich a great part of the plantation. 



But, how shall five hundred acres, in one 

 body, of exhausted land, be enriched and 

 made to produce a crop worth the Jiarvesting-, 

 is the question — land that has been run with 

 corn or grain crops until three barrels of the 

 former to the acre can only be obtained — can 

 the manure of half-a-dozen horses and half 

 as many cows, produce any sensation on such 

 an extended and impoverished plain ] Now, 

 it is a sore evil to possess so many acres of 

 la7id: some of them must lie at a great dis- 

 tance from the homestead and barns, and if 

 labourer's huts and cattle-sheds are located so 

 far from home, they will require continual in- 

 spection : manures cannot be conveniently 

 carried to all parts of so large a plantation ; 

 they should therefore be applied to the fields 

 near where they are made; and the more dis- 

 tant fields must therefore be enriched by a 

 system of green-cropping. Tares are much 

 used for this purpose in Europe, but whether 

 these would grow as rank and rapidly in our 

 dry and hot climate, is not known, as they 

 have never been extensively tried. Oats 

 have sometimes been grown to be ploughed 

 in, but upon poor land they give but a poor 

 layer for the purpose. Rye will grow upon 

 poor soils, but much seed must be sown, and 

 the crop must be permitted to grow tall, else 

 we shall have but little to bury with the 

 plough. Round turnips form a good crop for 

 turning dovv'n, but they will give no bulb in 

 poor ground. Indian-corn has been recom- 

 mended and partially tried, and is not more 

 exiiausting than oats or rye, and on land not 

 too much worn down, probably no green crop 

 would furnish more matter to be covered by 

 the plough ; but on land when quite ex- 

 hausted, this crop would not answer our pur- 

 pose, and the quantity of seed necessary for 

 seeding — four or five bushels per acre — v;ould 

 form quite an objection with economists. 



Now, buckwheat is a grain that will grow 

 on most soils; it delights in dry, gravelly or 

 sandy locations, and has many qualities that 

 recommend it highly as an article to be grown 

 for the purpose of filling the soil with vege- 

 table matter; it will produce a handsome 

 layer for the plough, on land that will pro- 

 duce nothing else, and it is not found to be an 

 exhausting crop; it may be raised many 

 years in succession on very poor lands with- 

 out manure, and the yield is often more than 

 twenty bushels of seed per acre — sufficient 

 to sow twenty acres — it has a very small 

 fibrous root, easily pulled up by hand, with a 

 large branching head, which cannot get its 

 support altogether from the root, and has, 

 therefore, probably greater facilities for pro- 

 curing nourishment from the atmosphere than 

 most other plants have, and theory and expe- 



rience unite in showing, that this plant takes 

 less from the soil than any other of the same 

 size. It has, too, a rapid growth, six weeks 

 being, in Massachusetts, long enough to bring 

 it into full bloom, when it should be ploughed 

 down ; these crops might, therefore, be turned 

 under in the middle and southern States dur- 

 ing the summer, and then it will be early 

 enough (September 1st) to sow down the land 

 with grass. Another advantage attends the 

 raising this, for grain or for green crops, for 

 the cost of the seed is small, it usually bears 

 the same price of corn, is worth quite as 

 mucli for feeding stock, and one bushel is 

 seed sufficient for an acre ; the straw is also 

 good for cattle, and yet large piles of it are 

 burnt in the fields, where it is customary to 

 thresh out the crop. 



Now, with this article, the once beautiful 

 plains, formed from the washings of the 

 Gulph of Mexico, and lying between the Al- 

 leghany Ridge and the Atlantic Ocean, could 

 be soon renovated ; much of this fine tract 

 has been cropped time out of mind, while no- 

 thing was grown that could make any ade- 

 quate return, in the shape of manure, for 

 what was abstracted; and though the soil 

 has been thus mismanaged and abused, yet, 

 by the aid of this plant and a few years of 

 good husbandry, its pristine value and im- 

 portance might be restored. The various 

 grasses must form one of the series in the 

 rotation of crops on such soils, but none of 

 these are great exhausters, and when lands 

 are kept half the time in grass, the roots fill 

 the soil with vegetable matter, that turns to 

 manure directly on being turned by the 

 plough ; and by raising more grass, more 

 stock might be kept, and thus the quantity 

 of animal manure is increased. 



The policy of raising so many acres of 

 corn on reduced land, must be abandoned; 

 for where more buckwheat can be raised on 

 the acre than corn, it ought to be substituted 

 for it, as it requires not a sixth part of the 

 expense to raise it; and when it is raised for 

 its grain, if care be taken to sow something 

 with it that may be turned in for a green 

 crop in June, upon which turnips or ruta 

 baga may be sown, the land will prove more 

 abundantly productive year after year. Green 

 crops form the cheapest of all manures, and 

 there is no question but they are suitable for 

 the soils upon which they grow, but a roller 

 must be passed over them in the same direc- 

 tion as the intended furrows, before the plough 

 is used. 



Fall-seeding with grass, is more safe than 

 spring-seeding, and when land has been en- 

 riched by the turning in of two green crops 

 in the summer, it may be laid to grass any 

 time in September. When the quality of 

 the soil has been so much improved as that a 



