THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



173 



what is the* most judicious and cheapest 

 application. 



Now the expense is twofold; ihe ex- 

 pense of collecting the original materials 

 and of hauling them to the spot where 

 the manure is to be prepared; and then 

 the expense of hauling the manure to the 

 ground to be manured. 



In common practice, the most conve- 

 nient locality tor feeding slock is selected 

 for the farm pen, without regard either to 

 facility in gathering litter to it in the fall 

 or hauling it in spring to its destination. 

 Of all the manures usually employed in 

 •our middle country there are none which, 

 in the labor of hauling, bear any propor- 

 tion to that part of the manure consisting 

 of vegetable matter. That management 

 which diminishes the hauling of vegeta- 

 ble matter by nearly* one-half must be 

 worthy of consideration. 



For some years 1 have adopted the fol- 

 lowing plan. To avoid double hauling, 

 I have carried on the ground which I 

 designed to improve all such litter as 

 needed no trampling, viz: leaves — both 

 oak and pine — straw, muddy grass and 

 weeds from marshy places liable to inun- 

 dation, and indeed, nearly all vegetable 

 matters commonly used to make manure, 

 except cornstalks. * These I have placed 

 in circular heaps fifteen or twenty feet in 

 diameter, at convenient distances for spread- 

 ing, and covered them, over with a coat 

 of animal manure, sprinkling on the heaps 

 gypsum or common salt, and sometimes 

 both, to fix the ammonia. I have let 

 them lie, before turning, until there has 

 been falling weather enough to wash the 

 soluble parts of the animal manure into 

 the litter below. Towards the spring I 

 put all the ashes I can raise, over the 

 heaps after turning them. After ten days 

 of warm weather in the spring, such 

 heaps are sufficiently rotted for any com- 

 mon purpose. I think that in quality 

 they have this advantage. The large 

 quantity of vegetable matter in proportion 

 to the other materials, causes the fermen- 

 tation to progress so moderately as to 

 prevent that partial combustion, called by 

 the Scotch farmers " fire-fan gin g" which 



is evinced by the extreme lightness and 

 the moodiness of the manure. 



I should violate the brevity, which you 

 very properly require, were I to extend 

 my remarks much farther on this subject. 

 Permit ine, in summing up what I com 

 sider to be the advantages of this plan, 

 to state, that it lessens greatl} 7 , as I have 

 before said, the hauling of vegetable mat* 

 ter — much the most bulky and ponderous 

 ingredient of our manures; that, instead 

 of rvjfling. as it is humorously termed in 

 this neighborhood, along the avenue to 

 the house, it enables -one to improve lands 

 at a distance from the homestead, near 

 the woods or other spots abounding in 

 litter ; that, instead of 'distributing the dif- 

 ferent kinds of manure on different spots 

 of land, without regard to system, it en- 

 ables the farmer, though ignorant of 'che- 

 mistry, to scatter equally over his land — 

 if not every kind of food for plants, a very 

 considerable variety — by applying a little 

 of the less bulky but more stimulating 

 kinds, upon each one of his vegetable 

 heaps; and lastly, that the manure, on 

 account of the slow process of fermenta- 

 tion, when thus made, is better. 



It has been the fashion for some yearSj 

 in this region, to aim at enriching poor 

 land by turning under green crops ; and 

 much money has been wasted in the pur- 

 chase of clover and other grass seed. I 

 consider it just as useless and as great a 

 waste of labor and money to attempt the 

 cultivation of green crops on dead land 

 as it would be to put them in tobacco, 

 corn or wheat. We must, at least, look 

 at the naked, bald truth, in relation to 

 such lands — take the bull by the horns — 

 and enrich them by the main force of 

 manuring. When we get them up to 

 clover-heart we may keep them rich by 

 turning under green crops. When we 

 have no more dead lands to enrich with 

 leaves we may very well apply them as 

 top-dressing to young grass, as recom- 

 mended by an able writer, signing " R," 

 in the " Enquirer," in the summer of 1 845, 

 and since re-published in your " Planter." 

 That article or any thing else on agricul- 

 ture, written by " R," can hardly be read 

 too often. 



