Management of Hops. 
561 
Manures and Methods of Manurint/. 
As the annual produce, both in bine and hops, is great, the 
ground requires at least an annual dressing of manure, and some- 
times twice in a year. Tlie hop, being a perennial plant, has not 
the advantage of being benefited by a rotation of crops, as wheat 
or barley with alternate green crops — the roots and refuse of one 
being food for the other ; but here is, year after year, so long as 
the ground is continued in plant, a requirement of the same de- 
scription of food for the plant. 
There are various descriptions of manures which experience 
has taught us to be well adapted to the necessities of the hop- 
plant ; and we also learn from the same source that some that are 
well adapted for one soil are not equally so for another ; and we 
find there is no manure better adapted for every variety of soils 
than good farm-vard dung, and particularly when beasts have been 
fed on it with oil-cake or corn ; and why this is so, we are told by 
those who are versed in agricultural chemistry, is, because that 
manure most contains all the varieties of substances that the plant 
requires, and in a more equal degree than any other. Mr. Nesbit, 
in his analysis of the mineral ingredients of the hop, published in 
vol. vii. part i. of the Society's Journal, has made it appear 
that one sort of manure, with a much less quantity of it than is 
usually put on, contains a sufficient quantity of some ingredients, 
and not enough of some, and scarce any of others, that are required 
by the hop-plant ; showing that very few of the various manures, 
however abundantly laid on the ground, are sufficient for its 
healthy subsistence without the help of others, and that an un- 
necessary expense is incurred in laying on more of one descrip- 
tion of manure than is useful, and that manures should be mixed. 
The correctness of all this I do not doubt, and a change of manures 
every time the hop-ground is manured I have found by experience 
to be good, constituting a mixture of manures in the earth ; for it 
cannot be, because I lay on a manure that contains a double quan- 
tity of one ingredient required by the plant, that, as the plant only 
takes half that year, the other half will be of no use another year. 
1 have no doubt that a more judicious application of manures 
to hop-grounds, as well as to the other products of the earth, 
may and will be effected with the help of science; and that if 
not brought to a higher state of perfection than some are now, 
the same state will be attained with less expense. 
The principal manures used for hop-grounds are farm-yard 
and oilcake-fed dung, woollen rags, shoddy or wool-waste, seal- 
skin, rape-cake ground down to a powder, guano, &c. ; the two 
latter named are better and more applicable for summer manur- 
ing. Sprats are often used for manuring hop-grounds ; they act 
