MY OWN PLAN OF MANAGING MANURE. 93 



to run to waste. 4th. The manure, if turned over in February or 

 March, will be in capital order for applying to root crops ; or if 

 your hay and straw contains weed-seeds, the manure will be in 

 ood condition to spread as a top-dressing on grass-land early in 

 the spring. This, I think, is better than keeping it in the yards 

 all summer, and then drawing it out on the grass land in Septem- 

 ber. You gain six months' or a year's time. You get a splendid 

 growth of rich grass, and the red-root seeds will germinate next 

 September just as well as if the manure was drawn out at that 

 time. If the manure is drawn out early in the spring, and spread 

 out immediately, and then harrowed two or three times with a 

 Thomas' smoothing-harrow, there is no danger of its imparting a 

 rank flavor to the grass. I know from repeated trials that when 

 part of a pasture is top-dressed, cows and sheep will keep it much 

 more closely cropped down than the part which has not been 

 manured. The idea to the contrary originated from not spread- 

 ing the manure evenly. 



"But why ferment the manure at all ? Why not draw it out 

 fresh from the yards ? Does fermentation increase the amount of 

 plant-food in the manure ? " No. But it renders the plant-food 

 in the manure more immediately available. It makes it more 

 soluble. We ferment manure for the same reason that we de- 

 compose bone-dust or mineral phosphates with sulphuric acid, and 

 convert them into superphosphate, or for the same reason that we 

 grind our corn and cook the meal. These processes add nothing 

 to the amount of plant-food in the bones or the nutriment in the 

 corn. They only increase its availability. So in fermenting 

 manure. When the liquid and solid excrements from well-fed 

 animals, with the straw necessary to absorb the liquid, are placed 

 in a h3ip, fermentation sets in and soon effects very important 

 changes in the nature and composition of the materials. The in- 

 soluble woody fibre of the straw is decomposed and converted into 

 humic and ulmic acids. These are insoluble ; and when manure 

 consists almost wholly of straw or corn stalks, there woul 1 be 

 little gained by fermenting it. But when there is a good propor- 

 tion of manure from well fed animals in the heap, carbonate of 

 ammonia is formed from the nitrogenous compounds in the 

 manure, and this ammonia unites with the humic and ulmic acids 

 and forms humate and ulmate of ammonia. These ammoniacal 

 salts are soluble in water as the brown color of the drainings of 

 a manure heap sufficiently indicates. 



Properly fermented manure, therefore, of good quality, is a 

 much more active and immediately useful fertilizer than fresh, un- 



