1848. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



123 



Farming ia Rhode Island. 



MANURING ROOT CROPS. 

 In a late number of the Providence, (R. L) 

 Journal, sent ntie by my early friend Adam 

 Anthony, I read with absorbing interest, a very 

 well written detail of his farm management, or 

 rather what a Seneca county farmer would call 

 his farm making. When, eighteen months ago, 

 I stepped from the surrounding desert, on to this 

 Oasis of Adam Anthony's, I said to myself, by 

 what magic has this arid sandy waste been 

 clothed with such redundant vegetation ? Such 

 a thick set lawn, such clover, such a growth of 

 corn in drills for fodder, such Indian corn, I had 

 rarely ever seen on the alluvial plains of the 

 all-fertile west. Here, said I, is a tableaux vivant 

 in the vegetable kingdom, which if it does not 

 exhibit the physical contour and perfection of 

 the animal man, it does more, for it shows him 

 in the combined strength of all his moral and 

 physical perfections ; it shows what he has done 

 for the benefit of his race, by causing tons of 

 grass to grow, where heretofore hardly one blade 

 could be found to mark the domain of sterility. 

 1 soon learned from the intelligent, enter- 

 prising proprietor himself, that the modus ope- 

 randi by which he had produced this great living 

 picture, partook neither of charm or mighty 

 magic. Science and practical experience had 

 revealed to him, that on a soil where the inor- 

 ganic, not less than the organic matter, the phos- 

 phates of lime, soda, potash, &c., had been in the 

 beginning washed into the adjoining ocean, the 

 basis for a perfect vegetation, could only be at- 

 tained by bringing to this hungry surface those 

 iost inorganic treasures, in the condensed form 

 of the ashes of plants. To this end, he com- 

 menced with the application of two hundred 

 bushels of leached ashes to the acre — an expen- 

 sive mode of renovating land, if we did not con- 

 sider its very favorable location as to market, 

 the absence of all direct competition, and above 

 all, the lasting ability or nucleus these ashes 

 give to the soil itself to perpetuate its fertility, 

 through the medium of its own productions. 



This farm is a hungry, sandy loam, with a 

 subsoil of gravelly detritus. The ashes at first 

 enabled it to produce grass ; now the dung of 

 forty stabled cows, composted with swamp muck 

 and neat, gives an increasing grain bearing fertil- 

 ity to ;he whole tilled surface. In the recital of his 

 farm management Adam says : — "Although deep 

 and mellow tillage for carrots is uniformly re- 

 commended, a different practice in several in- 

 stances has been attended with the best results. 

 On a very hard and slaty soil a larger crop was 

 produced than on the deep tillage, and also on 

 light sandy loam, where the manure was only 

 hoed in without plowing." ' May it not be in 

 ferred that the cause of this result, was owing to 

 the unfermented condition of the manure, that 



on the shallow tillage, being more directly ex- 

 posed to the atmosphere, fermented in season to 

 feed the present crop, while that in the deep til- 

 lage fermented too slowly to be immediately 

 available? Had the manure been free stable 

 dung, without peat and muck, a very different 

 result might have been produced ; the deep til- 

 lage would then have taken the lead, at least at 

 the end of the race. Experiment has always 

 proved that stable manure is the most reliable 

 food for the present crop. Nature makes this 

 compost — man makes the other, and nature must 

 have time to rectify his errors. 



I have often been disappointed in the action 

 of compost manure the same season it Avas ap- 

 plied to a garden crop, but the effect of stable 

 dung is immediate. If no manure is applied 

 to the soil the next season, that part which had 

 received the compost will give the best yield. 



I have been led to the above remarks, only be- 

 cause a great master in rural economy, very 

 modestly expresses his doubts as to the causes 

 which produced the effect in his own experiments. 



Waterloo, N. Y., 1848. S. W . 



A Seneca County Farm. 



A FARMER who disports himself on a 200 acre 

 farm in the flat alluvial plateau of Romulus, 

 came here to-day to buy butter and cheese for 

 his own family use. This same man told me 

 that the only plump wheat he grew on one field, 

 was on the soil thrown out of a deep ditch cut to 

 relieve the field of surplus water. As far as the 

 soil from this ditch was spread the wheat was 

 plump, long eared and abundant ; on the re- 

 mainder of the field it was thin and shrunken. 

 Methinks I hear the hackneyed, hereditary far- 

 mer say — " This is a grass farm ; it should be 

 plowed less — keep more cows ; the man should 

 make his own butter and cheese, and have much 

 more to sell." 'Tis true that this farm will yield 

 good hay, and an abundance of early pasture ; 

 but after the middle of July, if not before, heat 

 and drouth are certain ; springs there are none — 

 water is scarce — pasture dries up — the calcareous 

 soil cracks open — the cows, hw as they are, 

 feed at the straw stacks in August. They now 

 look wistful, dried up, thirsty, and the milk-pail, 

 now useless, is put down cellar to keep it from 

 falling to pieces. 



If this farmer does buy a little butter and 

 cheese, he also sells more wheat, clover seed, 

 corn, oats and pork, than some whole towns in 

 a cold, springy, grazing country. He has taken 

 the Genesee Farmer more than eight years ; 

 and what is better, he cuts all the leaves, and 

 reads it understandingly. He knows that his 

 subsoil to the depth of fifty feet, more or less, 

 affords the very best pabulum for grain crops ; 

 and grain he intends to grow. He is now ditch- 

 ing, and is desirous of knowing where he can 

 1 procure the best subsoil plows- S. W. 



