Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 407 



bushels of potatoes on two acres ; had, one year, 200 bushels on 

 banked meadow, which were sold for one dollar and fifty cents per 

 bushel, amounting to $300 per acre. Plows about five inches deep. 

 The greatest difficulty with him now in raising a wheat crop is to 

 get it to stand up so as to fill. 



We next went four miles, to the farm of George Abbott, near 

 Salem, and visited with him his banked meadow, now in herds grass. 

 He had just finished mowing fifty acres of this herds grass, producing 

 from two to two and a half tons per acre. lie had some of his 

 banked meadow planted with potatoes, the vines looking most luxuri- 

 antly. These were not aftected by the drouth. Owing to the large 

 crops of grass cut and foddered on his farm for more than fifty years 

 past, he plows six inches and raises good crops. The reason he gave 

 us for plowing so deep as six inches was to make room for manure, 

 lie does not want tide meadow plowed more than two or three 

 inches deep, just enough to cover the sod ; by so doing he succeeds 

 best, although the rich deposit is several feet deep. These tide 

 meadows, when dry, produced the heaviest crops of corn and potatoes, 

 and with lime only, heavy wdieat. C. Ilarmer, of Lower Penn's 

 Neck, gathered from ten acres, only limed, 370 bushels of wheat. It 

 is difficult to lime this tide meadow so heavy as to injure it. W. G. 

 Woodnutt applied 1,000 bushels slaked lime to one-third of an acre, 

 with the view of mixing with the soil for compost, but was induced 

 to plant it with corn, and the result in the large growth of corn was 

 astonishing. The account was published with the proceedings of the 

 farmers' club of Salem county. Green sand marl of the West Jersey 

 Marl Company, and other marls of the same strata and composition, 

 applied to the surface of poor land, on young clover, ten tons to the 

 acre, early in the spring, with a moderately wet season, sometimes 

 causes such a wonderful growth of clover, that it falls long before 

 mowing time. 



On viewing the appearance of the growing crops in Salem county 

 during our late visit there, and during the spell of protracted dry 

 weather then existing, we can say that we know of no section of 

 country under any system of culture where the growing crop would 

 be more flourishing under like circumstances than that witnessed by 

 us when there. And we believe from what we saw, and from cor- 

 roborating evidence of others, that this land, plowed five inches deep, 

 or under, will withstand the dry weather cpiite as eflfectually as that 

 plowed deeper. The reason is, all soils contain certain amounts of 



