GRAIN. 47 



• 



soon as the ground begins to vegetate in spring the wheat roots 

 find another rich feeding ground in the decayed grass turned 

 under the autumn previous. All of which serves to hasten the 

 crop and have it ready for an early harvest. Fields managed 

 in this way have been ready to cut the twelfth of July, thereby 

 escaping both weavil and blight. 



Night soil is an excellent manure and fertilizer for wheat. In 

 September last a part of a field of wheat was manured with night 

 soil mixed with peat ; that part of the field thus treated has 

 now (Dec. 1st,) the appearance of being, to say the least, equal 

 to any part of the field. Now if every farmer would save the 

 waste by being at the expense of making tight vaults and using 

 peat, a sufiicient quantity of manure or fertilizing substance 

 might be made each year for at least from one-half to an acre 

 of wheat or some other crop. 



Salt a fertilizer for wheat and rye. Although a member of 

 this committee has used salt for potatoes without any good re- 

 sults, but rather an injury, yet we find the following article in 

 the "Country Gentleman," by a Michigan farmer. He says : 

 -' In 1865 I sowed about eleven acres of wheat which had been 

 entirely impoverished, consisting mostly of light sandy soil, with 

 rye, two bushels of seed per acre. The field had been in white 

 beans the year before, and had not returned the cost of the seed 

 and labor. For the rye it w^as plowed in July, and buckwheat 

 sown, which was turned over when in blossom and rolled down. 

 The rye was sown broadcast in October, and after harrowing, 

 ten bushels refuse salt was sown over the field, (eleven acres.) 

 The result was in some respects extraordinary. Before germi- 

 nation a tremendous gale, lasting through several days, carried 

 volumes of sand off the field, reminding one of the Simoons of 

 Sahara. The following winter was open, without snow sufiicient 

 to cover the rye. During the succeeding summer and fall sev- 

 eral severe gales prostrated the corn in the neighboring fields, 

 but did no injury to this rye, which was of very rank growth 

 and attained an unusual height, yielding thirty bushels per acre, 

 The rye crop in my vicinity was almost a total failure. In the 

 spruig of 1866, clover was sown by a machine on the young rye 

 and produced as even a lay and good yield as could be desired. 

 My deductions from this experiment are that the salt gave in- 

 <;r eased growth and stoutness of straw and an increase of yield 



