254: 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[July, 
New Jersey State Fair, to be held at Waverly, 
next fell, where they can be seen by those 
interested in poultry. "We understand that 
neither eggs nor chickens are at present for sale. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 91. 
There seems to be an unusual amount of red- 
root in the wheat and clover this season. There 
are acres in some fields where it has actually 
choked out the wheat and taken full possession 
of the soil. The Deacon has a little of it in his 
■wheat and has been pulling- it out by hand and 
throwing it into the road. My own wheat, espe- 
cially that I " fall-fallowed" two years ago for 
barley, is tolerably clean ; but I have one fifteen- 
acre field of two-year-old clover that is one thick 
mass of red-root. I never saw anything like it. If 
the clover was mown for hay, there -would be 
red-root enough in it to seed the whole farm for 
years to come. But we are pasturing the field, 
and the question is what I had better do to get 
rid of this terrible pest. I hail intended plow- 
ing up the field and sowing it to wheat this fall. 
The seeds of the red-root will, of course, be on 
the surface of the land, and if the sod was 
turned over six or seven inches deep, with a 
skim coulter, or what we used to call a Michigan 
double plow, the seed -would probably lie at the 
bottom of the furrow and not germinate this 
fall, and consequently the wheat would not be 
troubled with it. It is, however, only postpon- 
ing the evil day. The seed is there, and sooner 
or later it will produce a great crop of red-root. 
If -we sow the field to wheat this fall, and seed 
it down again with clover, the greater portion 
of the seed of the red-root would probably lie 
at the bottom of tin? sod till the field was again 
plowed. If it was then broke up in June and 
fallowed for fall-wheat, we should have reason 
to expect a great crop of red-root. Being in 
the wheat, there would be no opportunity of 
killing it. ' It would go to seed, and the evil 
would be increased rather than lessened. If, 
instead of fallowing the clover soil for wheat, 
it was broken up in the spring and planted to 
corn, followed with barley or oats, and then 
sown to wheat, we should adopt the very best 
course to cause the red-root to germinate in the 
wheat. It is said to be a fact that red-root seed 
will not germinate except in September or Oc- 
tober; and that the only way to get rid of it is 
to prepare the land for fall-wheat, and then not 
"sow it to wheat. The red-root will then ger- 
minate, and the plants will be plowed under 
in the spring and destroyed. 
"I wish you would tell us, through the 
American Agriculturist" writes a distinguished 
New York gentleman, who has a farm of bar- 
ren sand, " whether it is best to let clover ripen 
and rot on the surface, or plow it under when 
in blossom ? I have heard that it gave more 
nitrogen to the laud to let it ripen and rot on 
it, but as I am no chemist I do not know." — If, 
instead of plowing under the clover— say the 
last of June, it was left to grow a month longer, 
it is quite possible that the clover roots and seed 
would contain more nitrogen than they did a 
month earlier. It was formerly thought that 
there was a loss of nitrogen during the ripen- 
ing process, but the evidence is not altogether 
conclusive on the point. Still, if I had a piece 
of sandy land that I wished to enrich by clover, 
I do not think I should plow it under in June 
on the one hand, or let it grow until maturity 
and rot down on the other. I should rather 
prefer to mow the crop just as it commenced 
to blossom, and let the clover lie, spread out on 
the land, as left by the machine. There would, 
I think, be no loss of fertilizing elements by 
evaporation, while the clover hay would act as 
a mulch, and the second growth of clover would 
be encouraged by it. Mow tins second crop 
again about the first week in August. Then, 
unless it was desirable to continue the process 
another year, the land might be plowed up in 
two or three weeks, turning under the two 
previous crops of clover that are on the surface, 
together with the green clover still growing. I 
believe this would be better than to let the 
clover exhaust itself by running to seed. 
I am aware that this is contrary to the deduc- 
tions drawn from Dr. Voelcker's celebrated ex- 
periments on clover. But in truth it must be 
admitted that this able and usually cautious 
chemist has for once been hasty in his con- 
clusions ; and several of our ablest American 
agricultural writers seem to have accepted his 
opinions without giving them due consideration. 
The facts are simply these : 
A field of 11 acres was sown to winter wheat, 
and seeded down in the spring with 12 lbs. per 
acre of clover. The wheat yielded 40 bushels 
per acre. The next year, on the 25th of June, 
the clover was mown for hay. We are told 
that " the best part of the field yielded 3 tons 
(6,720 lbs.) of clover hay per acre; the whole 
field averaging 2'| 2 tons (5,600 lbs.) per acre." 
We are not informed how much land there 
was of the " best part," but assuming that it 
was half the field, the poorer part must have 
yielded only 4,480 lbs. of hay per acre, or only 
two-thirds as much as the other. This shows 
that there was considerable difference in the 
quality or condition of the land. 
After the field was mown for hay, it was di- 
vided into two parts: one part was mown 
again for hay August 21st, and yielded about 
30 cwt. (3,360 lbs.) of hay per acre; the other 
half was allowed to grow six or seven weeks 
longer, and was then (October 8th) cut for seed. 
The yield was a little over 5'| a bushels of seed 
per acre. Whether the clover allowed to grow 
for seed was on the richer or the poorer half of 
the field, we are notiuformed. 
Dr. Voelcker then analyzed the soil. That 
from the part of the field mown twice for hay, 
contained per acre : 
1st sir Sd.six 3d_sU T S e8 18 
Phosphoric acid . . 
Nitrogen 3,350 
inches, inches, inches. 
4,950 2,725 
1,875 
deep. 
3,575 11.250 
1,325 6,550 
The soil from (he part mown once for hay, and 
then for seed, contained per acre : 
Istsis Msix Msix T ?£k™ 
inches, inches, inches. 
deep. 
3,500 11,625 
2,225 10,300 
Phosphoric acid 3,975 4,150 
Nitrogen 4,725 3,350 
Dr. Voelcker also ascertained the amount and 
composition of the clover roots growing in the 
soil on the two parts of the field. On the part 
mown twice for hay, the roots contained per acre 
24'| 2 lbs. of nitrogen. 
On the part mown once for hay, and then for 
seed, the roots contained 51' | a lbs. of nitrogen 
per acre. 
These are the facts. Now, what are the de- 
ductions? If I was shelling the corn from a 
couple of corn cribs, and should find that one 
crib contained 100 bushels of corn and the other 
only 50 bushels, and should find furthermore a 
large rat in the former and a small one in the 
latter, and should send the rats to a chemist for 
analysis, and he should report that the big rat 
contained twice as much nitrogen as the small 
one, I should be somewhat surprised to find 
that the learned chemist had written an elabo- 
rate essay on the matter, giving the composition 
of the two samples of corn and of the two rats, 
closing with the following " summary :" 
1st. A good rat removes from corn a consid- 
erable amount of potash, phosphoric acid, ni- 
trogen, and other matters which enter into the 
composition of our cultivated plants. 
2d. Notwithstanding the large amount of 
nitrogen and other constituents of food removed 
from the corn in the body of the well-grown 
rat, there was found, nevertheless, a larger 
amount of nitrogen in the corn from the crib in 
which the aforesaid rat was grown than in that 
where the small rat was found. 
3d. During the growth of the rat a large 
amount of corn accumulates in the corn cribs. 
4th. The larger the rat the greater is the ac- 
cumulation of corn in the crib. 
Dr. Voelcker draws similar deductions from 
his experiments on clover. He says " an im- 
mense amount of nitrogenous/food accumulates 
in the soil during the growth of clover." " This 
accumulation of nitrogenous plant-food is, as 
shown in the preceding experiments, much 
greater when clover is grown for seed than 
when it is made into hay." " An enormous 
quantity of nitrogenous organic mailer, as we 
have seen, is left in the soil after the removal of 
the clover crop." This is all very true. And 
so there was a large amount of corn in the corn 
crib when the small rat was found ; and a still 
larger amount when the large rat was discov- 
ered. But there is no evidence to show that the 
clover had anythiug more to do in producing 
this nitrogenous matter in the soil thau the rat 
had in producing the corn in the crib. We do 
not know how much corn there was in the crib 
before the rat got into it; neither do we know 
how much nitrogen there was in the soil before 
the clover was sown ! 
There was 3,350 lbs. of nitrogen per acre in 
the first six inches of soil, when the clover was 
mown twice for hay, and 4,725 lbs. when it was 
allowed to grow six or seven weeks longer and 
go to seed, or 1,375 lbs. more in the one case 
than the other. Dr. Voelcker says, and says 
truly, that " more leaves fall on the ground 
when clover is grown for seed than when it is 
mown for hay; inconsequence, more nitrogen 
is left after clover seed than after hay, which 
accounts for wheat yielding a better crop after 
clover seed than after hay." In other words, 
there was 50 bushels more corn in the crib 
where the big rat was found — and it would be 
just as reasonable to attribute this increase to 
the rat as it is to attribute the increased amount 
of nitrogen in the soil, to the fact that the 
clover was allowed to go to seed. To produce 
the extra 1,375 lbs. of nitrogen found in the 
six inches of surface soil, would require over 
one Jiundred tons of clover leaves. 
The truth of the matter seems to be, that the 
part of the field on which the clover was al- 
lowed to go to seed was naturally much richer 
than the other part, and consequently produced 
more clover and more clover roots. And it Dr. 
Voelcker's analyses prove anything they prove 
this — and nothing more. 
In 1864, I plowed up a field of clover and 
planted corn. In 1865, planted corn again, and 
used the cultivator very freely both years to 
kill the weeds. In 1866, sowed barley, followed 
by wheat, and seeded down into clover in the 
