GREEN MANURING. 35 



loads. I have used these on grass lands, with great benefit, at the 

 rate of fifty to one hundred bushels to the acre. As the ashes stay 

 in the soil for many years, it is best in my opinion to put them on 

 grass, and when the sod is broken up, the other crops get the benefit 

 from them. I think they are a valuable fertilizer for farmers who are 

 able to procure them at a reasonable price. In boat or car loads near 

 the City of New York, they sell for eighteen to twenty cents a bushel. 

 (Mr. H.) I am sure you are right But I would go a little further, 

 and say that as wood ashes contain all the substance of the wood, 

 which of course is a vegetable product that has been taken from the 

 mineral part of the soil, everything contained in them is of course 

 necessary to a growing plant and therefore there is no waste whatever 

 in them. Every part of them is valuable and they are necessarily 

 useful for any or all crops. I don't know of any plant or crop to 

 which they would not be useful. The question often comes up, if coal 

 ashes are not also useful. But coal is a mineral and not a vegetable, 

 and coal ashes do not therefore contain valuable fertilizing property 

 to any considerable extent. I consider their only use to be mechan- 

 ical, in loosening heavy soils, and in compacting light soils. 



GREEN MANURING. 



(Mr. C. ) The practice of growing crops for the purpose of plowing 

 them under to fertilize the soil, is one that can often be turned to 

 very great advantage. When a farmer has unfortunately become 

 possessed of a poor farm, there is no better way of cheaply improving 

 it than this. To procure an adequate supply of manure is rarely 

 possible, and at the best is a very costly process. But a crop that 

 may be easily grown in a few weeks, and then turned under, may 

 furnish to the soil as much fertilizing matter as eight or ten tons of 

 manure; and the process may often be repeated two or three times in 

 one year. For instance, if land is plowed in October and sown to 

 rye, the rye may be turned under in May or June, and corn may be 

 planted. This will be in full growth early in August, when it may also 

 be turned under, furnishing ten or twelve tons more of valuable mat- 

 ter. In turning under so tall a crop as corn or rye the plow should 

 be run across the rows, and a heavy chain looped from the plow beam, 

 just ahead of the standard, to the land side end of the inner whifne- 

 tree. This loop drags in the furrow, so as to catch the falling corn 

 or rye, and pulls it down and into the furrow so that the soil covers 

 it. To prevent the disturbance of the green manure by the harrow 

 after this, the ground should be rolled after the plowing, and then 

 harrowed with the smoothing or brush harrow, or worked with the 



