8 MR. colman's address. 



hundred and fifty fi-om the resources of the farm itself * This 

 improvement was chiefly effected by the extended cukivation of 

 Indian corn and a most careful application of the fodder or 

 offal. — Cultivate your farm to the extent of yovn* power of ma- 

 nuring and keeping it clean ; and the power of manuring may 

 by judicious management be increased to an almost indefinite 

 extent. Land which, when it is manured, will not more than 

 pay for the labor of cultivation, should be abandoned. 



There is a material distinction between ploughing too much 

 land and ploughing land too much. For garden-culture and 

 tap-rooted vegetables the land cannot be in too fine tilth ; but 

 for other crops it is not so important ; and the great object 

 should be to preserve all the vegetable matter in the soil, that by 

 fermentation and decomposition it may supply food to the grow- 

 ing plants. The common mode of ploughing green sward for 

 example is to tear it in pieces in a rough and careless manner, 

 to leave the sods loose on the surface, and then by harrowing to 

 break them fine, and if possible, to bring all the grass and vegeta- 

 ble matter to the top to be exhaled by the sun and air — a more 

 wasteful process cannot be pursued. Mr Phinney, an intelli- 

 gent and practical cvdtivator in Lexington, Mass., had the 

 curiosity to weigh the vegetable matter in a single foot of sward 

 land, taken from a field, which had been mown for a number of 

 years, the soil a light loam with a gravelly bottom, and thinly 

 set with red top and herds grass ; and found it to contain nine 

 ounces of vegetable matter consisting of the roots and tops of the 

 grasses ; giving at this rate upwards of twelve and a quarter tons 

 to the acre." This itself would be a very considerable manur- 

 ing ; but this by the usual management is entirely lost. It is 

 therefore of the last importance in breaking up land to turn the 

 sod as completely as it can be turned, and at a season when 

 there is the greatest quantity of vegetable matter on the surface ; 

 to roll it that the air may be excluded ; and all the benefit of the 

 decomposition of the vegetable matter retained in the soil ; and 

 afterwards to cultivate the crop as far as possible witliout disturb- 



* Albany Ag. Tracts, No. II. p. 50. 



