THE SOUTHERN PLANTER, 



219 



For the Southern Planter. 

 YIELD OF INDIAN CORN. 



Mr. Editor, — I see that the Cultivator has 

 rather vauntingly put forth a list of some forty 

 individuals, who have raised upwards of an 

 hundred bushels of corn to the acre. I also ob- 

 serve that these wonders were all achieved north 

 of the Potomac. Now, I am not exactly like 

 the Kentuckian who bragged that the water in 

 his native State was wetter than it could be 

 found elsewhere, but I am too good a patriot to 

 permit a brag to go round without saying some- 

 thing for my own country. This, then, I will 

 say for the people of Virginia and North Caro- 

 lina, that I believe they can beat any people 

 upon the face of the earth in cultivating poor 

 land. God knows, if experience is of any va- 

 lue, they ought to be peifect. And in fact, I 

 believe there are many of them that can, and 

 do, get an average of five bushels to the acre 

 where Liebig himself could'nt get one. I have 

 met with some long, lank, sun-burnt fellows, of 

 six feet high, and si ill growing 1 believe, who 

 can tell you the only way in the world to get a 

 barrel of nubbins off a certain piece of land, 

 and who, upon his own ground, could beat the 

 world in making corn. 



The Cultivator intimates that it could have 

 made its list still longer, and we all know a long 

 list is something, especially in the bragging 

 line. Let him, then, do his best, and I will en- 

 gage for every man he can produce, north of 

 the Potomac, who raises a hundred bushels to 

 the acre, to find two at the South that do not get 

 five; so we will beat him in length of list at 

 least. 



In the list referred to in the Cultivator, except 

 on the virgin lands of Kentucky and Ohio, this 

 product is confined to little patches. Nor do I 

 believe that in any of the older States such a 

 yield is attainable, except at great expense and 

 the consumption of fertilizing manures that 

 would exhaust upon a few acres all the attaina- 

 ble means of an ordinary farmer. But I do be- 

 lieve, that there are thousands of acres of our 

 own lands now yielding less than five bushels 

 to the acre, that, by a judicious system of im- 

 provement and a concentration of means upon 

 a smaller space, might be made to yield a per- 

 manent average of ten or twelve barrels to the 

 acre. He would be a public benefactor, who 

 would by actual experiment demonstrate this 

 fact to the people of Virginia. I do not mean 

 the fact, that, by annual hauling of manure 

 from our towns, land can be made to yield ten 

 barrels of corn to the acre, but that by a judi- 

 cious system of cultivation, the resources of the 

 farm itself will produce this yield. There is no 

 man who would not be willing to exchange a 

 hundred acres of land yielding five barrels to 

 the acre, for fifty acres that would give him ten 



barrels to the acre ; and yet, by selling the fifty 

 acres and bestowing the proceeds on the remain- 

 ing fifty, I believe, in nine cases out of ten, the 

 same result might be obtained. 



The old notion that large crops of corn can- 

 not be made in this climate, that it must have 

 "distance" to keep it from " firing," begins to 

 be exploded. Firing is now considered to be a 

 failure for want of nourishment, which a hot 

 sun quickly evaporates from a shallow soil: 

 therefore the hotter the sun, the deeper and richer 

 should be the soil, and the greater will be the 

 crop of corn. 



It is astonishing what an effect one individual 

 will have upon a neighborhood. I have some- 

 times seen a clever improving farmer settle down 

 in a province of Boeotian darkness: at first he 

 is looked upon with distrust, and even derision, 

 if he is known to get an agricultural newspaper 

 from the post office : but in a little while, the 

 result of superior management becomes appa- 

 rent, and one of two consequences ensues: his 

 neighbors either begin to imitate him, or they 

 remove their quarters. 



It is utterly impossible that any man can 

 continue to make one barrel alongside of an- 

 other, who makes twelve to the acre ; he must 

 either yield or fly, and in this way it is, that one 

 good example often reforms a neighborhood. 

 Your obedient servant, 



A Reformer. 



FALL PLOUGHING. 

 To the Editor of the American Farmer: 



Sir, — I have been for a long time anxious to 

 controvert, as I conceive, a very erroneous sys- 

 tem in agriculture, but one which seems to be 

 adopted by most of the writers for your valua- 

 ble journal. I allude to the too prevalent opi- 

 nion that clay soils should be broken up in the 

 fall in order to prepare the land, by the action 

 of the frost, for the next year's crop. Now t my 

 limited experience has taught me that there is 

 no system more injurious than this, and had not 

 distrust of my ability to do the subject justice, 

 restrained me, I should long since have pro- 

 tested against a practice so destructive to the 

 soil. I confess that my reluctance to attack a 

 system, so generally advocated, has been much 

 increased by finding this doctrine partially ad- 

 vocated in a work, which should be in the hands 

 of every agriculturist, published by the late 

 Judge Buel, and called "the Farmer's Compa- 

 nion." But as I believe the true interests of 

 agriculture require that all subjects should be 

 thoroughly discussed and tried before they are 

 engrafted upon the system, I feel compelled to 

 raise my feeble voice to contend that there is 

 nothing more destructive to land than exposure, 

 without some covering, to the effects of either 

 frost or sun, and that no land intended for culti- 



