Improvement of Peaty Gromul. 



4C5 



This first crop of oats is general!)^ beaton down hy tlio weather, 

 being vreak and long in the straw, and^, though not a bad crop, 

 looks better than it really is. 



On land ■wdiicli is not peat but peaty some farmers grow 

 barley: there is a large crop of straw, and it is therefore liable 

 to be laid ; the grain, too, is but thin. The advocates of barley, 

 however, assert that a bad sample of barley is better than a bad 

 one of oats, because thin barley may be ground or may be used for 

 seed, whereas seed-oats should be as plump as can be found. On 

 the other hand, it has been stated to me by a gentleman residing 

 in Lincolnshire that " he considers barley the most objectionable 

 grain which can be sown upon peat-soil, and that its injurious 

 effects are visible for five years." 



The rape and the oats will generally have proved successful, and 

 indeed by their luxuriance may lead one to suppose that more 

 improvement has been made than is really the case. It is now 

 that doubt and difficulty begin. The oats or barley are fol- 

 lowed by rye-grass, which has been sown among them, but if 

 these have been laid, as they often are, large patches of the rye- 

 grass will have been destroyed. Even if they have not been laid, 

 the peaty soil will perhaps throw out many of the grass-plants by 

 the roots in the next winter, and still more in the succeeding one, 

 if, as is usual here, the rye-grass be left for two years. The 

 motive for so leaving the ground two years in grass is that it 

 may regain solidity before it is again ploughed: still this is but a 

 poor rotation which gives only one crop of corn in four years. 

 On the other hand, if the ground were left permanently in grass, 

 there is reason to suppose that in a few years the fine grasses 

 \vould wear out, the coarse herbage return, and the land be no 

 better for the expenses incurred in drainage. Nay, one farmer 

 thinks he had observed it become worse, because the aquatic 

 grasses natural to peat no longer obtained the moisture which they 

 require, and the better grasses do not grow well. In order to 

 meet this evil the gravel or rubble which has been taken out 

 'from the main drains is spread over the ground in the winter 

 before the oats are sown : and, however sterile and hungry be the 

 material thus used as a manure, there is no doubt that it pro- 

 duces a strong effect, for the rye-grass is much thicker and sweeter 

 where this has been done : this is called firming or weighting the 

 land ; it is good as far as it goes, but the staple of the soil is still 

 very weak. When wheat is sown on ground that is at all peaty, it 

 will almost certainly lose plant in large patches, even though the 

 land has been dunged, and the young wheat has been trodden in 

 by women, as is sometimes done in the spring.* There is clearly 



* If wheat be tried on land approaching to peat, it is thought that blue 

 cone wheat affords the best chance of a crop. 



