114 COTTON CULTURE. 



under the shed, other and more concentrated fertilizers 

 may be added. If your soil is deficient in lime, sprinkle, 

 say a bushel, every time the yard is scraped. Wood ashes 

 never come amiss on any soil. Sprinkle over the compost 

 heaps all the ashes the place affords, never allowing a 

 shovelful to be thrown away or to become leached by the 

 rain. Obtain a few pounds of sulphuric acid, and after it 

 has eaten up all the bones and decayed animal matter on 

 the place, sprinkle it upon the compost beds. The de- 

 cayed leaves and the ashes will afford the potash your 

 crops want ; the bones and the ordure will yield the phos- 

 phoric acid and the lime. 



In this manner, when March comes, there will be five 

 hundred bushels of compost manure for every acre of cot- 

 ton. The land upon which it is to be spread was fallow 

 the year before, and thus the cocoons of the Boll-worm 

 are all dead. Mark off the field by a scooter plow (unless 

 the old rows are visible) into lines ; the first, fifteen feet 

 from the fence, and the others, thirty feet apart. On these 

 lines or rows deposit the manure, in heaps of ten bushels 

 each. This is easily done by having the capacity of the 

 cart twenty bushels, and hoeing out half at the first heap 

 and dumping the rest of the load for the second. In this 

 way the manure is evenly distributed at the rate of ten 

 bushels to nine hundred square feet, which is within a 

 small fraction of five hundred bushels per acre. With 

 compost manure, made up as described, and especially that 

 to winch ashes, lime, dissolved bones or guano has been 

 added, this allowance is heavy manuring and very thrifty 

 plants may be expected. Accordingly, the rows should 

 be laid off wide ; five feet is none too wide. Mark the 

 beds by running a plow at this interval that will make a 

 deep, narrow, furrow. Now spread the compost, throwing 

 some, but not a great deal, into this furrow, and let the 

 turn or mould-board plow follow, casting two furrows 

 toward and into this first trench, and continue running un* 



