174 PEAT-MEADOWS. 



Sometimes we are enabled to burn the sods as they 

 lie when no rain comes for ten days in succession. 

 Then all the labor of piling and of spreading about the 

 ashes is saved. This is the easiest mode of preparing 

 for the grass-seed, but we are not always able to burn 

 the sods thus. 



When the heaps are burnt, nothing remains to be 

 done but to spread the ashes, sow the seed, and rake it 

 in with a common hand-rake. This should be done 

 early in September, if we expect a good swath of grass 

 the next summer ; but any time in September will an- 

 swer for sowing these low meadows with herds-grass 

 and with red-top. We have seldom seen these grasses 

 winter-killed on these peat bottoms. 



When we are unable to burn all the turf by the 

 middle of September, we spread the ashes over the 

 whole surface, after having replied the unburnt sods in 

 a new place, and we let these piles stand in shape of 

 haycocks until another summer. Then they will 

 sometimes burn wholly down without any trouble, and 

 their ashes should be spread on to the grass-ground, and 

 a little seed should be sown on the ground where the 

 heaps stood. 



In this mode, meadows may sometimes be prepared 

 for the seed for ten or fifteen dollars to the acre. It 

 sometimes costs thirty dollars. One advantage in this 

 mode of reclaiming meadows is, we have manure 

 enough in the peat-ashes for two or three years, and 

 we sometimes cut two tons to the acre without any 

 other dressing. It cost us more than twenty dollars 

 to subdue an acre of this meadow, for we were begin- 

 ners, and had no instruction. We sold about four acres 

 of this reclaimed meadow to Dr. O. Dean, at two hun- 

 dred dollars an acre. Such lands must have a new 

 dressing once in a few years ; and, if compost manure is 

 carried on, it should consist in part of gravel, this 

 being far preferable to sand. Not more than one peck 

 of herds-grass (timothy) should be sown on an acre, 



