368 



N E VV ENGL A N D FAR M E R 



MAY C, -SlO. 



[From ' Transactions of tlie Essex Agriciiluiral Society.'] 



ON EXPERIMENTS ON MANURES. 



To the Trusted- of the Essex Agrinitlural Societij : 



Gentlemen, — Tlie only claim to which the nt- 

 tenlion of the Conuiiittee on E.tperinients on Ma- 

 nures lias been called, is that of Dr Andrew Nich- 

 ols, of Danvers. Hi.s farm in Middleton was visit- 

 ed in July and September. Early in the spring he 

 had caused unleaclied vvood-ashcs l<> l.e spread on 

 low and cold soils, and the crops of fjrnss gave 

 evidence that the application was very favorable. 

 It had produced a heavy bnrdcii of grass on, kind 

 which otherwise would have hid but a light and 

 sour crop. 



His corn was manured with a compost made of 

 a small portion of miiii.al maiaire, seventy bushels 

 of ashes and meadow or peal mud. '; he soil is a 

 sandy loam. The growth in July was lu.vuriant, 

 and in September there was a handsome display of 

 full-grown, well-filled ears, in the judgment of the 

 Committee about fifty bushels to tlie «cre. This in 

 some circumstances would not be considered a 

 large yield, but 'he soil is n-iturally lii;lit and for 

 many years had not been well' manured. The com- 

 mittee were satisfied by the appearance of tiie 

 crop, that tliis year the proper maimre and good 

 tre.itment had been applied, and that in ordinary 

 seasons a compost of ashes, meadow niud and barn 

 manure, will, on sandy and loamy soils jirodiice a 

 fair crop of corn. In the locality of Dr Nichols's 

 faim, it would be difficult and expensive to procure 

 animal manure in sufficient quantities to plant any 

 considerable extent of land, and we liiiow of no 

 cheaper or better substitute. 



The attention of the Committee was also direct- 

 ed to a piece of barley, on which a solution of pot- 

 ash and peat mud had been applied, and the quan- 

 tity of straw and grain appeared to iiave been doub- 

 led by the operation. But the advantages of this 

 application were still more apparent on a small 

 portion of lai'd on which onions had been sown. — 

 Although it was not in proper tilth for such a crop, 

 it produced at the rale of six hundred and forty bush- 

 els to the acre. On a small part of the land none 

 of the solution had been used ; here, the crop was 

 very light, giving evidence that the superiority of 

 the crop was owing to the novel appUcat-ion. 



The subject is imptutant to farmers. Manure is 

 the capital on which they do bus.ihess. And the 

 man who teaches them how to obtain it at a reasona- 

 ble rate and in sufficient quantities, does the public 

 better service, than if he lectured the live long day 

 on copper and silver mines, and amused the sleepy 

 hours with golden dreams. 



The Committee think Dr Nichols's experiment 

 valuable, and his statement satislactory ; they re- 

 commend that it be publislied, and that the Socie- 

 ty's premium of twenty dollars be awarded to him. 

 For the Commitlec, 



DANIEL P. KING. 

 Danvers, Dec. '2S, lS:i'.\ 



PR A. Nichols's st.\teme.m'. 



To the Committee of the Essex Agricultural Sor.iety, on 

 Manures. 



Persuaded of the importance of the discoveries 

 made by Dr Samuel L. Dana, of Lowell, and given 

 to the world through the medium of the reports of 

 Professor Hitchcock and Rev. 11. Colman, to the 

 Legislature of Massachusetts, concerning the food 

 of vegetables, geine, and the abundance of it in 



peat mud, in an insoluble state to be sure, and in 

 that state not readily absorbed and digested by the 

 roots of cultivated vegetables, but rendered soluble 

 and very easily digestible by such plants by potash, 

 wood-ashes, or other alkalies, among which is am- 

 monia, one of the products of fermenting animal 

 manures, I residved last year to subject his theories 

 to the test of experiment ih^ present season. Ac- 

 cordingly I directed a quantity of black peat mud, 

 procured by ditching for the purpose of draining 

 and reclaiming an alder swamp, a part of which I 

 had some years since brought into a state highly 

 productive of the cultivated grasses, to be thrown 

 into heaps. During the winter I also had collect- 

 ed in .Salem, 2t2 bushels of unleached wood-asbes, 

 at the cost of 12 1-2 cents per bushel. These 

 were sent up to my farm, a part to be spread on 

 my black soil grass lands, and a part to be mi.\ed 

 with mud for iny tillage land. Two hundred bush- 

 els of these were spread on about six acres of such 

 grass land while it was covered with ice, and fro- 

 zen hard enough to be carted over without cutting it 

 into ruts. These lands produced from one to two 

 tons of good merchantable hay to the acre, nearly 

 double the crop produced by the same lands 

 last year. And one fact induces me t<i think, that 

 being spread on the ice, as above mentioned, a 

 portton of these ashes was washed away by the 

 sprijig freshet. The fact from which I infer this, 

 is, that a run below, over which the water coming 

 from the meadow on which the largest part of these 

 ashes were spread flows, produced more than double 

 the quantity of hay, and that of a very superior 

 ijuaiity to what had been ever known to grow on 

 the tame land before. 



Seventy bushels of these ashes, together with a 

 quantity not^ exceeding thirty bushels of mixed coal 

 and wood ashes made by my kitchen and parlor 

 fires were mixed with my barn manure, derived 

 from one horse kept in stable the whole year, one 

 other horse kept in stable during the winter months, 

 one cow kept through the winter, and one pair of 

 oxen employed almost daily on t'le road and in the 

 woods, but fed in the batn one hundred days. 

 This manure wa.^ never measured, bnt knowing 

 how it was made, by the droppings and litter or 

 bedding of these cattle, farmers can estimate the 

 quantity with a good degree of correctness. 'I'he.se 

 ashes and this ma'nure were mixed with a suffi- 

 cient quantity of the mud above mentioned by fork- 

 ing it over three times, to manure three acres of corn 

 and potatoes, in hills four feet by about three leet 

 apart, giving a good shovel full to the hill. More 

 than two-thirds of this v/as grass land, which pro- 

 duced last year about half a ton of hay to the acre, 

 broken up by the plough in April. The remainder 

 was cropped last year without being well manur- 

 ed, with corn and potatoes. Gentlemen, you have 

 seen the crop growing and matured, and I leave it 

 to you to say whetlier or not the crop on tliia land 

 would have been better had it been dressed with 

 an equal quantity of pure, well rotted barn manure. 

 For my own part I believe it would not, but thai 

 this experiment proves that peat mud thus man- 

 aged, is equal if not superior, to the same quantity 

 of any other substance in common use as a manure 

 among us; which, if it be a fact, is a fact of im- 

 mense value to the farn.ers of New England. By 

 the knowledge and use of it, our comparatively 

 barren soils may be made to equal or excel in pro- 

 ductiveness the virgin prairies of the West. There 

 were many hills in which the corn first planted was 

 destroyed by worms. A part of these were supjili- 



ed with the small Canada corn, a part w-ith beans. 

 The whole was several times cut down by frost. 

 The produce was three hundred bushels of ears of 

 sound corn, two-tons of pumpkins and squashes, 

 and some potatoes and beans. Dr Dana, in hia 

 letter to Mr Colman, dated Lowell, March G, 1831), 

 suggests the trial of a solution of geine as a ma- 

 nure. His directions for preparing it are as fol- 

 lows : "Boil one hundred pounds of dry pulverized 

 peat with two and a half pounds of wliite Ssh, (an 

 article imported from England,) containing 36 to 

 5.1 per cent, of pure soda, or its equivalent in pearl- 

 ash or potash, in a potash kettle, with 130 gallons 

 of water ; boil for a few hours, let it settle, and dip 

 off the clear liquor for use. Add the same quan- 

 tity of alkali and water, boil and dip off as before. 

 The dark colored brown solution contains aboitt 

 half an ounce per gallon of vegetable matter. It 

 is to bo applied by watering grain crops, grass 

 lanes, or any other way the fartner's quick wit will 

 point out." 



In the ii.oiith of June I prepared a solution of 

 geine, obtained not by boiling, but by steeping the 

 mud as taken from the meadow, in a weak lye in 

 tubs. I did n(.t weigh the materials, being careful 

 only to use more inud than the potash would 

 render soluble. The portion was something like 

 this : peat 100 lbs., potash 1 lbs., water 50 gal- 

 lons ; stirred occasionally for about a week, when 

 the dark broWn solution, described by Dr Dana, 

 was dipped off and applied to some rows of corn, a 

 portion of a piece of starved barley, and a bed of 

 onions sown on land not well prepared for that 

 crop. Tlie corn was a portion of a piece manured 

 as above mentioned. On this the benefit was not 

 so obvious. The crop of barley on the porticin 

 watered was more than double the quantity both in 

 straw and grain to that on other portions of the field, 

 the soil and treatment of which was otherwise pre- 

 cisely similar. 



The bed of onions which had been prepared by 

 dressing it with a mixture of mud and ashes pre- 

 vious to the sowing of the seed, but which had not 

 by harrowing been so completely pulverized, mixed 

 and kneaded with the soil as the cultivators of this 

 crop deem essential to success, consisted of three 

 and a half square rods. The onions came up well, 

 were well weeded, and about two bushels of fresh 

 horse manure spread between the rows. In June, 

 four rows were first watered w-ith the solution of 

 geine above described. In ten days the onions in 

 these rows were nearly double the size of the others. 

 All but six rows of llie remainder were then water- 

 ed. 1 he growth of these soon outstripped the un- 

 watered remainder. 



Mr Henry Gould, who manages my farm on 

 shares, and who conducted all the foregoing exper- 

 iments, without thinking of the importance of leav- 

 ing at least one row nnw atered that we might better 

 ascertain the true efl^ect of this management, see- 

 ing tlie benefit to the parts thus watered, in about a 

 week after treated the remainder in the some man- 

 ner. The ends of some of the rows, however, 

 which did not receive the watering, produced only 

 very small onions, such as are usually thrown away 

 as worthless by cultivators of this crop. This fact 

 leads me to believe that if the onions had not been 

 watered with the solution of geine, not a single bush- 

 el of a good size would have been produced on the 

 whole piece. At any rate it was peat or geine 

 rendered soluble by alkali that produced this large 

 crop. 



The crop proved greater than our most sanguine 



