©I)c .farmer's iHontl)Iij Visitor. 



37 



in a bushel basket. Mr. Peaslee states as the 

 expenses of this crop, three cords of manure at 

 $4 per cord ; one and n half pounds of seed at 

 $2; other expenses, $10 — making in the whole 

 S'25. We must conclude in this, could not be 

 included all the expenses of labor. If that bad 

 been as much more, making fifty dollars in the 

 whole, the cost of the crop would not have 

 amounted to more than twelve and a half cents 

 a bushel. The wholesale price of onions is 

 never less than one dollar per barrel or fifty 

 cents per bushel. The last season, from a par- 

 tial failure of the crop, was .*l Ji.'i a barrel as the 

 lowest price. — As for our own use after the sum- 

 mer is past we find it for our gain to send sev- 

 enty-five miles to the Boston market and pur- 

 chase onions rather than to attempt the rais- 

 ing them in our own garden : the raising of 

 potatoes by wholesale is much more easy and 

 profitable. 



The Model Farm ot New Jersey. 



The following letter from Professor Mapes 

 published in the Newark Daily Advertiser, will 

 be read by agriculturists with interest. The 

 farm of Mr. M. is regarded as the " model farm" 

 of New Jersey. The means used to improve 

 bis laud are thus described : 



"I would state that my success may be mainly 

 attributed to the use of the subsoil plough, and 

 a proper system of manuring. 



"The land is a clayey loam, underlaid by clay 

 ten inches thick on a substratum of decomposed 

 sandstone, and until the clay was cut through by 

 the subsoil plough, the surface was too wet to be 

 productive. 



"It may not he uninteresting to your corres- 

 pondent to know the different methods adopted 

 for the manufacture of this manure. The chlo- 

 ride of lime and carbonate of soda is made by 

 slaking three bushels of shell lime, hot from the 

 kiln, with one bushel of common salt dissolved 

 in water. Common salt being composed of chlo- 

 rine and soda, the lime combines with the chlo- 

 rine, forming chloride of lime, which in turn re- 

 ceive carbonic acid from the atmosphere and be- 

 comes carbonate of soda. This mass should be 

 turned over every other day for ten days, at the 

 end of which time it is ready for use. Four 

 bushels of this mixture thoroughly divided 

 through one cord of muck, will decompose it 

 perfectly in ninety days in winter, and in a pro- 

 portionately less lime in summer. 



" When this muck cannot readily be procured, 

 any other organic matter will answer the same 

 purpose: pond scrapings, river mud, decayed 

 leaves, or even head lands, with one twentieth 

 its bulk of stable manure, or weeds will answer 

 well. 



" My stables are arranged thus : tinder the ox- 

 en, cows, &c, the earth is removed to the depth 

 of eighteen inches, making a space capable of 

 holding a half cord of muck for each animal. 

 This muck is covered at night with salt hay for 

 bedding, and the liquid manure voided by the 

 cattle is absorbed by the muck, and rapidly de- 

 composes it. This decomposition is assisted by 

 the warmth of the animal while sleeping upon 

 the bedding. The solid manure is removed 

 from the bedding each morning, and after being 

 mixed with twenty times its hulk of muck is 

 placed under cover. The muck containing the 

 fluid portions of the manure is removed every 

 four days, and 13 also placed under cover; after 

 I ten days the manure heap is turned over and 

 wetted with a weak solution of nitrate of soda, 

 alter which it is permitted to remain until suf- 

 ficiently decomposed for use — thirty days. 



" All thje weeds of the farm are daily thrown 

 into the hog pen, and the hogs are induced to 

 root among them, to obtain which they keep the 

 weeds in continuous motion until decomposed. 

 About once in ten days the pen is emptied and 

 after salting the weeds to prevent the possibility 

 of their again germinating, they are mixed with 

 twenty times their bulk of muck, and four bush- 

 els to the cord of the salt and lime mixture, and 

 placed under cover, where the mass readily 

 heats, and after twenty days is ready for use. 



"These manures, with the occasional use of 

 special manures for special crops, selected with 

 reference to their chemical components as com- 

 pared with the requirements of the plant desired 



lo be raised, constitute the manures used. 



"The amount of manure I am enabled to 

 make by these methods, and the assistance of six 

 OSen, three COWS, three burses, and twenty hogs, 

 is about fifty half cords per week. 



"The subsoil plough is no less important than 

 a sufficiency of manure, and without its assist- 

 ance no great results can he obtained. 



"The capacity of soil to perfect vegetables, is 

 precisely ill proportion to the quantity of its par- 

 ticles, presented to the action of the atmosphere 

 for oxidation, and nut one of the most inconsid- 

 erable uses of manure is to leave space by its 

 decay for the admission of the atmosphere. 



" To bring about these conditions, deep plough- 

 ing is necessary, and to avoid bringing subsoil 

 of a sterile quality to the surface, while disinteg- 

 rating to a great depth, the subsoil plough must 

 be used. 



" My surface plough maybe Used to turn a 

 furrow ot any depth between four and twenty 

 inches, the depth of action being regulated by 

 the guide wheel. VV'e always use this plough at 

 one inch greater depth than the thickness of sur- 

 faced soil ; thus, if the surface soil be fourteen 

 inches deep, the plough is set fifteen inches. 

 One inch of the subsoil is thus brought to the 

 surface at each ploughing, and by the action of 

 the sun and atmosphere, is gradually converted 

 into loam. 



"The subsoil plough follows in the bottom of 

 the furrow left by the surface plough, and is us- 

 usally set at not less than seventeen inches: this 

 plough is so constructed as to throw up nothing, 

 but merely to disintegrate the soil at this great 

 deptb, replacing it where taken from without 

 mixing it with surface soil. The advantages, 

 beyond the admission of atmosphere, are, that 

 in dry weather the roots can pass down below 

 the sun's more immediate action and obtain 

 moisture, and in wet weather the excess of 

 moisture can pass down through the subsoil cut. 

 If the land is thus kept free from the excess of 

 moisture it can never become cold or sour. Af- 

 ter one thorough subsoil ploughing the land can 

 be worked for much less expense, and is ready 

 for use at an earlier date in the spring. 



"My seeds being all planted by a drill barrow, 

 and the rows of plants consequently equi-distant 

 from each other, they can be cultivated and 

 weeded by a horse cultivator, instead of using 

 the slow and expensive hand hoe. 



"Should your correspondent think proper to 

 visit me, I shall be happy to answer any other 

 question he may wish to propose. 

 Yours, respectfully, 



JAMES" J. MAPES. 



Gladly does the editor of the Visitor find, in 

 the successful example of Professor Mapes, a 

 fellow-laborer who with him can bear testimony 

 in favor of " the subsoil plough and a proper 

 system of manuring." 



Our want of his science will not enable us to 

 say that with any assistance we have yet had we 

 could make any thing near "fifty half cords pet- 

 week" of compost manure; but we have in a 

 less rapid manner brought our manures to that 

 action, which, upon the lightest subsoiled ground, 

 tells well for our experiment. 



The method of manuring, which we have ta- 

 ken up, is the manufacture of compost by clear- 

 ing the barn-yard in the fall of the manure made 

 in the previous summer, and placing it with 

 three or four times its quantity from the muck 

 bed, headlands and all convenient decaying mat- 

 ters, including common ashes leached or tin- 

 leached, the more the better where the composi- 

 tion is to be laid upon light grounds. Twenty 

 and twenty-five loads to the acre ill n season 

 while the ground is planted have been applied 

 to our fields spread broadcast over the laud. 



We have for the present year, at a distance 

 from home too great to carry our yard manure 



to advantage, about four hundred half cords of 

 compost prepared, to go as far as it will in cov- 

 ering a twenty-five acre field to be planted with 

 potatoes, if the ground can be prepared in sea- 

 son. This manure in the body is mainly from 

 an inexhaustible black muck bed lying in a hol- 

 low which divides a pine plain lot on the east 

 side of the river Merrimack. Our experience 

 enables us to say of this muck bed that in a se- 

 ries of years it is fully equal in value to an equal 

 volume of best stable manure. The muck is to 

 be meliorated with the addition of ashes leached 

 and unleached, with lime equal to a cask for 

 every ten loads of muck, covering over the top 

 of each pile with seventy-five bushels of salt 

 which cost little more per pound (less than one 

 half cent) than so much ground Novn Scotia 

 plaster. To this coat of manure, after it is 

 spread and the ground harrowed, we are prepar- 

 ed to add a sowing over the surface and after 

 harrowing or ploughing in of two hundred 

 pounds South African guano (weaker as six to 

 nine than the Peruvian guano) mixed with about 

 the same weight of ground plaster. The plaster 

 serves the double purpose of adding to the fer- 

 tility of the soil at the same time it preserves 

 and holds the ammonia of the guano. We are 

 free to use four tons of the guano this way the 

 present season from the great success attending 

 the use of the mixture last year. Then we used 

 two tons of the African guano mixed : that cost 

 us $40 the ton in Boston : our guano this year is 

 purchased at $30 per ton. We believe we owe 

 much of the excellent success we had in raising 

 two thousand bushels of potatoes without the 

 sign of rot or defect to the composition of guano 

 and plaster. 



The guano is of value in stimulating the first 

 crop upon land newly turned up and subsoiled: 

 our muck-bed compost enters into the crops 

 better perhaps in the second and is even felt up 

 to the fifth or sixth succeeding year than in the 

 first year. To new land, especially to the new 

 turning up of pine plains land reposing with a 

 thin surface soil over loose sand and gravel, a 

 mixture of compost will be valanble for two or 

 three years till it becomes thoroughly incorpora- 

 ted with the soil. As deep as it becomes neces- 

 sary to move this soil so deep will the ground 

 change and become a dark and rich mould, such 

 ground as we are habituated to find In the early 

 and belter gardens: the ground will become as 

 if alive to the tread, and will exhibit that moving 

 action as a "thing of life" which seems to give 

 animation to the vegetation springing out of it. 



This has been adopted by us as the most 

 "proper system of manuring" which we could 

 devise with the means in our hands. 



Willi Professor Mapes we cordially unite in 

 llie opiuon that "the subsoil plough is no less 

 important than a sufficiency of manure." With- 

 out the subsoil plough we cannot have confi- 

 dence that the drought of summer may not ar- 

 rest at the, most critical moment the growth of 

 the small potatoes in the hills or the delicate ears 

 of corn upon the stalk. With the stirring of the 

 ground sixteen inches below the surface, the 

 drought upon the pine plains is by us hardly 

 more feared than it is upon the deepest cultiva- 

 ted limestone fields of perennial green. Indeed 

 we are almost of the confident opinion that sub- 

 soiling will produce contined crops of hay upon 

 the lightest lands almost as surely as upon the 

 well-stimulated clay meadows. 



For light lands one subsoil ploughing will suf- 

 fice probably half a dozen years, going deeper 



