294 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



Encourage your children in a taste for 

 flowers. Teach them to plant the seeds 

 and roois, and to weed and keep them 

 clean, and train and cultivate them, and 

 the taste wilLremain with them when 

 they grow olcT It is on such things as 

 these, is the recollection of by-gone days, 

 that local attachment is founded, making 

 us delight to revisit the scenes of our 

 childhood, bringing back the wanderer 

 from distant climes, to seek a last resting 

 place in the home of his fathers. 



RECIPE FOR POUDRETTE. 



Take 40 bushels of mould from the 

 •woods, 



Five bushels of ashes, leached or un- 

 leached, 



Five bushels of bone dust, 



One bushel of plaster. 

 Incorporate the whole well together, by 

 shovelling it over until the mass is tho- 

 roughly mixed. Then moisten the heap 

 gradually with 30 gallons of human 

 urine ; shovel the whole over until the 

 entire compost is saturated with the urine, 

 then throw the whole into a conic pile, 

 and let it remair^r a week or two, when 

 it may be spread over an acre sowed in 

 wheat, as soon as that shall have been 

 ploughed in ; to be finished by harrow- 

 ing. 



We have no doubt that the above com- 

 post, or if you please to call it poudrette, 

 would increase the product of wheat a 

 hundred per cent, upon lands usually ap- 

 propriated to wheat culture — nor do we 

 doubt that it would so far improve the 

 soil as to answer, without any other ma> 

 nure, through a four years' course of 

 rotation. 



Somewhat similar to this is the following 

 method for making a compost of great power; 

 and which is still more simple than the above. 

 Have two or three barrels about three-fourths 

 lull of ashes, placed in some convenient spot 

 near the farm-house or barn, and cause all the 

 chamber-ley to be daily emptied upon them. 

 In a few days the ashes will be perfectly satu- 

 rated. Empty them in a pile, cover it with 

 earth, and refill the barrel with ashes. By these 



means, in a few weeks, from materials that 

 are generally lost about every establishment, 

 a large quantity of manure may be collected, 

 of a most singular efficacy. Having witness- 

 ed the results produced by a very thin sprink- 

 ling of it, we can testify to its worth. 



From the Ohio Cultivator. 



SUBSOIL PLOUGHING— BOTTOM 

 LANDS. 



Is it a fact, Mr. Editor, as I heard stated 

 at Columbus, that subsoil ploughing does 

 no manner of good, to our alluvial bottom 

 lands? If so, it should be generally 

 known, and the sooner the better. Seve- 

 ral of my neighbors contemplate purcha- 

 sing subsoil ploughs for that description 

 of lands. 1 may have committed an error 

 in recommending the practice. I never 

 used the subsoil plough, but from the re- 

 sults of very deep ploughing, experiments 

 and observations, I had come to the con- 

 clusion that it would be beneficial on al- 

 most every description of soils, provided 

 the land is not too we . 



Jt is very evident that the pressure of 

 the plough, running at a uniform depth for 

 many years, forms a hard stratum almost 

 impervious to water, and impenetrable to 

 the roots of plants. When breaking a 

 clover ley, a short time since, the ground 

 wet and loamy, with water standing on 

 numerous portions, shortly after heavy, 

 protracted rains, I found the earth quite 

 hard and dry at the depth of seven to 

 nine inches, or just below where the 

 plough usually ran. 



A neighbor, who pays but little atten- 

 tion to agricultural science, on renting a 

 farm adjoining me, complained that the 

 ground was so hard, at a depth of four or 

 five inches, that he could not plough be- 

 low that depth, without going entirely be- 

 neath that hard stratum, the former being 

 too shallow, and the latter too hard on his 

 team. I explained the difficulty ; the ori- 

 ginal proprietor had skinned about three 

 or four inches deep for some twenty-five 

 years, forming a complete hard-pan. 



Mr. J. Buffington, an extensive farmer 

 and quite an observing man, tells me 



