174 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Mat, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 77. 
"How Crops Feed," is certainly a very re- 
markable book, and the young farmers of Amer- 
ica owe Prof. Johnson the profoundest gratitude 
for his arduous labors in presenting to them 
in a convenient form all the known facts con- 
nected with this intricate subject. We have 
a concise account of all the important experi- 
ments recently made by the German and French 
investigators, and when we have carefully stud- 
ied this book we may feel sure that we know 
all that is known at the present time in regard 
to the nutrition of agricultural plants. 
Prof. Johnson promises us another work on 
" Cultivation ; or the Improvement of the Soil 
and the Crop by Tillage and Manure." His 
two works, "How Crops Grow," and "How 
Crops Feed," contain the principles which he 
will elucidate and apply to practical farming in 
his next volume. We shall look forward to it 
with the greatest interest. We know of no man 
better qualified for the task. Himself a farm- 
er's sou, with great practical common sense, 
and a thorough acquaintance with agricultural 
literature, he understands precisely what we 
wish to know, and his accurate scientific learn- 
ing, united with great caution, and a profound 
love of truth, will enable him to throw light 
on many of the questions which none of us at 
present are able to answer— such, for instance, 
as : Why gypsum is usually much more bene- 
ficial as a manure for clover and Indian corn, 
than for wheat and timothy? Why clover and 
the root-crops can get more nitrogen from the 
soil and the atmosphere, than wheat, barley, and 
oats ? Why thorough tillage increases the pro- 
ductiveness of some land and not of others ? 
Why manure does very little good on laud that 
needs draining ? and why such land, after drain- 
ing, is more productive than land that never 
needed draining ? In the present book we get 
a glimpse of his ideas on these subjects. He 
gives us the scientific facts, but we want them 
applied to practical farming so that we can 
more fully understand their meaning. 
On my farm — and it is so on hundreds of 
thousands of other farms in the United States — 
the three leading objects are (1) to get the land 
drained, (2) to make it clean and mellow, and 
(3) to get available nitrogen for the cereal crops. 
After the first two objects are accomplished, the 
measure of productiveness will be determined 
by the amount of available nitrogen in the soil. 
How to get available nitrogen, therefore, is my 
chief and ultimate object in all the operations 
on the farm. And it is here that science can 
help me. I know how to get nitrogen, but I 
want to get it in the cheapest wajr, and then to 
be sure that I do not waste it. It would seem 
from the facts presented by Prof. Johnson, that 
there is much more danger of the loss of nitro- 
gen than I had supposed. 
There is one fact fully established by experi- 
ment and experience— that 100 lbs. of available 
nitrogen per acre, applied in manure, will gen- 
erally give us a greatly increased yield of grain. 
I should expect on my farm that on land which 
without manure, would give me 15 bushels of 
wheat per acre, such a dressing of manure would 
give me 35 or 40 bushels. So much for the impor- 
tance of 100 lbs. of available nitrogen per acre. 
Now, I have 100 acres of low, mucky land, 
bordering on the creek that probably contains, 
in the depth of one foot, fifteen or twenty thou- 
sand lbs. of nitrogen per acre. As long as the 
land is surcharged with water this nitrogen lies 
dormant. But drain it and let in the air, and 
the oxygen decomposes the organic matter, and 
ammonia and nitric acid are produced. In 
other words we get available nitrogen, and the 
land becomes capable of producing large crops 
of corn and grass. And the crops obtained 
from this low, rich land, will make manure for 
the poorer upland portions of the farm. This 
is not new, though it cannot be too often re- 
peated. What is new to me is this : 
A soil was analyzed and found to contain to 
the depth of one foot, at the end of April, 4,652 
lbs. of nitrogen per acre. Of this amount, 63 
lbs. were in an available condition. A plot of 
this land, plowed and then allowed to lie va- 
cant, contained of available nitrogen, June 12, 
50 lbs. per acre ; June 30, 108 lbs. ; July 22, 
35 lbs. ; August 13, 56 lbs., and Sept. 9, only 19 
lbs. per acre. It would seem from this and 
other facts that when land lies fallow there is a 
large amount of available nitrogen washed out 
from the soil. And if we place confidence in 
these results we must conclude that there is a 
great loss in fallowing land. This is contrary 
to what I have hitherto believed. But these 
facts are at any rate worthy of consideration. 
For my own part I have not much confidence 
in the ability of a chemist to determine the 
amount of such small quantities of nitrogen in 
a soil. In fact, Prof. Johnson himself states 
that in determining the total amount of nitro- 
gen in an acre of soil, we may attribute a varia- 
tion of 200 or 300 lbs. to the unavoidable inex- 
actness of the analysis. 
There seems to be no reason to doubt that 
nitric acid is formed from the organic matter in 
the soil, in considerable quantity. This process 
of nitrification takes place most rapidly in hot 
weather, and when the soil is moist. Stirring 
the soil, by making it loose and porous, and let- 
ting in the air, also favors nitrification. Gyp- 
sum may also assist in this important process 
by furnishing oxygen to the decomposing or- 
ganic matter in the soil. Leaving the question 
of summer-fallowing in abeyance, one thing is 
certain : we cannot go wrong in cultivating the 
soil thoroughly while the crops are growing. Our 
crops certainly need available nitrogen. And 
it seems equally certain that in soils containing 
organic matter thorough cultivation will favor 
the formation of ammonia and nitric acid. 
The Deacon and I have a standing quarrel as 
to the best way of cultivating corn. He prefers 
to take an old sod, break it up deep with a 
jointer plow and three horses, harrow at first 
lengthwise of the furrows, and then diagonally 
across the furrows. The latter, he thinks an 
exceedingly important point. The harrows do 
not pull up the furrows, as they would if drawn 
directly across them, and }'et they break down 
the soil nearly as well, and leave two or three 
inches of nice, mellow soil to plant the corn in. 
If needed, he rolls the land, but this diagonal 
harrowing is always the last thing before plant- 
ing. He then marks out the land, 3'| 3 feet apart 
each way, and drops from four to five kernels 
in the hill, and is careful to get mellow soil to 
cover them with, and gives it an affectionate pat 
with the hoe. When the corn is three or four 
inches high, he treats each hill to a handful of 
a mixture of ashes, plaster, and droppings of 
the lien-house. He then runs the cultivator 
through the rows both ways, and goes twice in 
each row, keeping the outside tooth of the cul- 
tivator as near to the hill of corn as possible. 
The Deacon himself likes to take things easy, 
but his son finishes in this way about 2 acres of 
corn a day, which Is equal to cultivating eight 
acres once in a row one way. The corn is then 
hoed, and I do not believe that I enjoy digging 
an underdrain, or watching the Cotswold lambs 
playing in the sun, any more than the Deacon 
does hoeing corn. His face, always a cheer- 
ful one, now fairly beams with delight as 
he runs his sharp, bright hoe round the hill, 
straightening th» plants with his hand, and 
pulling up with the hoe a little fresh, mellow 
soil, to smother the weeds. Finally an inch or 
so of soil is pulled up around the hill and 
pressed smooth with the back of the hoe. 
In two or three weeks the corn is again cul- 
tivated once or twice in the row, both ways, and 
is then hoed again, a little soil being pulled to 
the plants to smother the small weeds that can- 
not be reached with the hoe. The pumpkin 
plants are also treated to a little fresh soil. 
This finishes the work. 
Now, I have no objection to this method of 
managing the corn crop, provided the cultiva- 
tor was used earlier and more frequently. 
What the Deacon specially objects to in my 
plan of raising corn is drilling in tlie seed. He 
thinks that when the seed is carefully planted 
by hand it is equal to a hoeing. There is prob- 
ably some truth in this idea. But our seasons 
are so short and the weather at planting time 
so precarious, that it seems to me better to plant 
the corn as soon as the land is plowed, harrow- 
ed, etc., without waiting, as must be done when 
planted in hills, until the whole field is finished. 
The better plan is to top-dress a clover sod 
with well-rotted manure in the fall, and let the 
clover grow until the weather is warm enough 
to plant. By this time the clover will be six 
inches high, and it may either be fed off by 
sheep or turned under. Plow carefully and then 
harrow thoroughly. A Shares' harrow is much 
the best. Roll, if need be, and make the soil 
as mellow as possible. Then drill in the seed 
in rows 3'ls feet apart and let the kernels be 6 
or 8 inches apart in the rows ; or let the drill 
drop three kernels in a hill, 18 or 20 inches 
apart. This latter is the plan I adopt. I cannot 
say which is best. We mark out the rows be- 
fore drilling, and try to make the rows as straight 
as possible. This is very important. Then go 
over the field with a broadcast plaster sower, 
and sow two or three bushels of plaster per 
acre. Just as soon as the rows can be dis- 
tinguished, start the cultivator, going once in a 
row at first, and twice in a row the next time, 
running the cultivator teeth as near to the plants 
as can be done without smothering them. Then 
go over the field with the hoe immediately after 
the cultivator, stopping to do nothing but cut 
out the weeds, and to straighten up any of 
the plants that may have fallen over. Keep a 
cultivator going between the rows as often as 
once a week for the first six weeks and occa- 
sionally afterwards, whenever the surface of the 
soil gets baked, or would bake if not cultivated. 
Perhaps it will be necessary to go over the field 
again with the hoes. I find nothing so good for 
the land as to cultivate and hoe the corn during 
hot weather in August. It kills every weed. 
And I do not think it injures the corn, though 
the Deacon and main' other sensible and expe- 
rienced farmers think it does. If the land was 
perfectly clear I would not do it. 
A farmer in Pennsylvania writes me: "I 
have a flock of Merino sheep, but I propose to 
dispose of all of them during the year. My in- 
tention then is to select common long-wooled 
ewes and cross with a thorough-bred Colswold 
ram — not with one crossed with a Merino, in 
which the wool is bettered at the expense of the 
