CARTER AND CO.’S GARDENER’S VADE-MECUM FOR 1862. 
U5 
PART III. 
CALENDAR OF FARM OPERATIONS. 
JANUARY. 
The horse-labour in this month consists for the most part of carrying corn to market and hauling manure to the fields 
Where it is next Spring to be applied. There is also the carriage of cattle food and of purchased manures for market, of 
lime and marl to the fields to be clayed or limed, of tiles to the fields being drained, and of road material where necessary. 
The land may occasionally be fit for tillage operations, and then ploughing proceeds, in the case of grass and clover leas, for 
wheat or oats, in the case of stubble land if any yet remains unturned, for root crops or for beans. 
The hand-labour of the month includes tho thrashing and preparation of grain for market, the loading and unloading of 
all kinds of material carried, the attendance upon live stock, road and fence making and mending, land drainage, and tho 
preparation of composts for application later in the season. Many of these operations are continued on from the commence- 
ment of tho winter until its close. Some of them aro taken up from previous months of tho last year ; and to these we 
refer for further discussion of them. 
Compost Manure. — The preparation of manure for 
use during the season of vegetable growth is one great 
business ot the winter season. This includes the purchase 
of fertilizers, both soluble salts, such as those of ammonia 
and the nitrates of potash and soda, for application as 
top dressing to the growing crops in April and May, and 
the less soluble fertilizers, as guano, superphosphate and 
bone-dust, which may bo applied early in the season with 
loss risk of waste and more probability of being used by 
the plants as soon as ready for absorption. It also includes 
the manufacture of heaps of fertilizing matter on the farm, 
whether of farmyard dung exclusively, or of dung and tho 
various vegetable and mineral auxiliary manures which tho 
farm affords. 
First, of those which are properly the compost heaps of 
the farm : — What a number of things may be turned to good 
account is plain from the mere list of the annual, vegetable, 
and mineral substances existing on tho farm, of some use us 
manures. There are thus, roots, hedge-ehippings, fallen 
loaves, weeds, couch-grass, fern-leaves, moss, river- and 
sea-weeds, sods and turf from ditches, lanes and hedge- 
rows, sawdust, spent bark and peats when properly decom- 
posed, among vegetable substances. Many of them contain 
their nitrogenous part in a higher proportion than the 
straw of grain., and several of them are equally ricli in the 
mineral constituents of plants. Besides these vegetable 
substances there is the animal waste, sometimes accessible 
on a farm, such as carcases, blood, bones, fat, blubber, 
waste fish, sprats, mussels, and other shell-fish, which are 
in some places and sometimes to be had. They all con- 
tain a large proportion of nitrogen, uhueli more, indeed, 
than ordinary farmyard dung. Mineral substances aro 
also available, such as earth from hedges, seourings of 
ditches, banks, ponds, road-scrapings, and various marls, 
chalk, and sometimes beds continuing a considerable pro- 
portion of phosphate of lime. Refuse substances of trade 
are also sometimes available, and equal in their fertilizing 
effects to any known manure; such are woollen rags, 
shoddy, soapers’ waste, glue refuse, refuse of starch- and 
sugar-works, of provisiou-curers, slaughter-houses, curriers, 
&c. 
Any of tlieso substances which contain the food of plants 
are of course applicable with good effect, as a manure ; but 
besides their direct contribution of matter to be built up in 
the growing crop, their influence on the texture of the soil to 
which they are to be applied has to be considered ; and 
hence, when applying mineral matter we improve light soils 
by tho use of clayey composts, and stiff soils by Tho use of 
light and organic composts. It is, however, the advantage 
of the compost form of manure, that the effect produced 
by its application is greater than the sum of the effects 
which would have been produced by the separate use of its 
several ingredients. And hence, in making our composts 
we use such ingredients as will improve and act on one 
another in the heap. Many of the ingredients named 
require a complete disintegration, in order to their ferti- 
lizing character, and henco lime, wliich facilitates their 
decomposition, is a very important ingredient in most com- 
posts. Peat, for instance, is a substance which can bo 
brought into use by the aid of lime, and composts of peat 
thus prepared, with the addition of farm dung, are often a 
most successful method of eking out and increasing the 
fertilizing resources of the farm. In practice, a lmlf- 
charred mass of rough vegetable matter if it had been 
originally woody, or a half-rotten heap of lime, or even 
mere mould, with such matter, if it have been originally 
succulont, may well be made the foundation and the top 
layer of heaps containing rotten flesh or blubber, or mere 
dung, to bo ultimately well mixed up together and used, a3 
the dung-heap usually is, for the green crops of the farm. 
If the land bo light or spongy it is well to mix as large a 
proportion of clay or marly earth as possible, for the sake 
of its influence on the texture of the land. 
It must, however, be added, that it is not to be recom- 
mended that much time be devoted to compost-making on 
the farm. Such manures are bulky, and involve great 
labour of cartage, and the system now is to spend money 
rather on tho direct purchaso of cattle food or portable 
manure, than on tho labour of developing the less imme- 
diate home resources of the farm. The use of many of 
these ingredients, as peat, first well dried and broken, 
sawdust, aud even spent bark (which is best half charred 
before use), is best confined to their employment as litter or 
iu the yards, whero they may suck up liquid fertilizers, 
otherwise liablo to waste. If laid up in heaps they should 
bo soaked with gas-water liquid manure, or other easily 
fermentable substances by which they aro reduced into a 
more soluble condition. If lime be mixed with them, its 
caustic effect will bo increased by the addition of a certain 
proportion of common salt. 
2. Of Farmyard dung: — This, as it consists specially of 
what has already grown out of the soil, acts as a fertilizer 
by restoring to the land ingredients taken thence, together 
with matters drawn also from the air, which shall thus 
feed another crop of plants. It is well, in order to cheek 
waste of manuro on the farm, to have a distinct impression 
of the quantitative nature of the fertility of the soil. Given 
a suitable climate and suitablo plants, it depends entirely 
on tho presence in sufficient quantity of thoso particular 
atoms wliich the plants invigorated by that climate need 
for the erection of then- structures. It is often declared 
that the rain washes the valuable quality out of tho dung, 
and that exposure to air induces the loss of its valuable 
qualities. Now, the quality of a manure depends altogether 
on that of its constituent particles. It is because ammonia 
contains nitrogen in a form in which plants can use it, 
that it is a useful element of the dung-heap, and to speak of 
exposure as rendering dung liable to the loss of much of 
its valuable qualities, just means that it is liable to the loss 
of its ammonia. So with the phosphates and other soluble 
salts. Dung never loses quality except by losing quantity. 
They are actual material particles, possessing weight, which 
