428 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept. 



or expenditures, save the cost of plowing, the use 

 of the land, and a small amount, for some miner- 

 al manures, fertility may be restored. 



4. Tillage lands should always be seeded with 

 grass, when suffered to rest. 



The man, who, after driving a horae hard all 

 day, should take his teeth out and then tie him to 

 a rack, filled with hay, would be denominated both 

 inhuman and unwise. Equally unwise is the cul- 

 tivator, who suffers his land to rest, without the 

 means of deriving nourishment from the great 

 storehouse of fertilizing matters, — the atmosphere. 



Where muck may be easily obtained; the sa'me 

 result may be secured, by a shorter process. Af- 

 ter plowing, spread a liberal dressing of muck up- 

 on the surfice and pulverize thoroughly with the 

 harrow. Then sow clover seed, rolled in dry ash- 

 es, — ten bushels of ashes to the acre. Plow in the 

 first crop of clover, — sow rye and the last of May 

 following, turn in tlie rye, and plant corn. 



Should these crude suggestions lead to examina- 

 tion and farther elucidation of this subject, my ob- 

 ject will have been gained. R. B. H. 



STUBBLE LANDS— THE ROLLER. 



Lands from which exuberant crops of hay have 

 been taken, ordinarily produce a heavy aftermath, 

 or as it is commonly called ''Fall feed.'" This 

 when the sod is carefully inverted and suffered to 

 decompose, furnishes a most excellent and sal- 

 utary manure. According to some writers who 

 have experimented accurately, an acre of well set 

 grass land contains (after the grass has been cut 

 for hay,) from thirty to forty tons of soluble mat- 

 ter "fit for the food of plants." This, by being 

 turned under after haying, is in a condition to 

 operate a highly salutary influence upon the soil 

 and its subsequent crops. Science has already de- 

 monstrated that no manure which it is within the 

 capacity of man to apply to the soil, is so efficient 

 as that produced by the decomposition of the 

 plants it is required to support. 



In France, and other countries where the grape 

 is one of the chief staples, the leaves and tendrils 

 of the vine are used, and wheat of the most sur- 

 prising luxuriance is produced by a compost formed 

 of the chaff and straw of that production. When 

 sprinkled on grass, grains of wheat have vegeta- 

 ted and produced sound seed, when simply covered 

 with this "manure,'" and "watered with pure 

 water." In the case of turning in stubble, the 

 laws of chemistry act with the greatest facility, 

 and produce, without any extraneous assistance, 

 the accomplishment of all the important results 

 affected by the best manure. A field that has be- 

 come so far exhausted as to require manuring, 

 harrowed and smved with grass seed, without the 

 impoverishing effect of an intervening crop of roots 

 or grains, would be at once iTCstored and made ca- 

 pable of the production of good and remunerating 

 harvests for a period of several years. 



This practice has already been extensively adopt- 

 ed among us, and with satisfactory results. It is 



true, that in consequence of the practice of "lone 

 cropping," some fields are so far exhausted as to 

 be able to produce enough to repay the cost of 

 turning down. On this subject a late writer re- 

 marks : — 



"There are some hay fields, however, the vege- 

 table matter contained in which, would be found 

 scarcely sufficient to remunerate one for the cost 

 of turning it in. On light, thin, and exhausted, 

 or "worn out" lands, this is often the case. Yet 

 even such lands, (however weakening may have 

 been the system of cropping previously pursued,) 

 are by no means undeserving of regard. It is bad 

 policy to neglect land simply because it has been 

 neglected. If I have a poor field, which, instead of 

 droducing enough*to pay the expense of carrying 

 it on, annually runs me in debt, my own interest 

 demands that I immediately set about its improve- 

 ment, and that I endeavor to effect this by the 

 adoption of some method that, without involving 

 too heavy an outlay ,will ultimately secure the de- 

 sired end. Rather than permit the soil to contin- 

 ue longer in this expensive, exhausted, and emas- 

 culate condition, I should disburse liberally, for 

 Hke bad habits in a man, the evil., instead of di- 

 minishing, will increase the longer it is indulged. 

 By turning in, therefore, whatever they have vigor 

 to produce, I necessarily augment the productive- 

 ness of such soils ; and if the texture be of a light, 

 calcareous description, the roller should be applied. 

 The application of this instrument, indeed, is in- 

 dispensable, in order to consolidate, and give firm- 

 ness to the constituent particles which otherwise 

 would remain too loose and porous to permit the 

 ready decomposition of the substances turned in. 

 This operation also facilitates, in a very important 

 degree, the salutary influences resulting to the 

 soil from the ameliorating agencies of irosts and 

 rains ; — a body, the atoms of which exist in a 

 state of extreme compression, being much more 

 efficiently operated on by these principles, than 

 one whose constituent corpuscles exist in astate of 

 separation, or farther apart." 



"All kinds of lands," says Von Thaer, in his 

 principles of Agriculture, have a tendency to ag- 

 glomerate, or become too close, either in conse- 

 quence of the attraction of cohesion of their parti- 

 cles, or of the pressure exercised on them by the 

 atmosphere. The more argillaceous (clayey,) a 

 soil is, the greater is the consistence and agglo- 

 meration. But most of the plants I cultivate, are 

 unable to penetrate so hard a soil, or to derive from 

 it the nourishment requisite for their support. It 

 is, therefore, necessary that the soil should be 

 loosened by some mechanical process ; and this 

 should be done as perfectly as possible, in order 

 that rich vegetation may be produced, and all the 

 nutritive matters contained in the ground be 

 placed within the reach of the roots of the plants. 

 In order to effect this, it is necessary that the lay- ' 

 er of vegetable earth should be pulverized till not 

 a clod or lump be left. The fibrous roots of plants 

 do not penetrate these clods ; all they can do is 

 to wind themselves around them, and consequent- 

 ly, clods of earth scarcely yield more nutriment 

 than stones." 



