SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
115 
ON THE PROPES TIME EOR MANURING. 
The leisure of the past suuimer has occasioned several 
communications to you, drawn fronrthe remembrance of 
many years of close attention to the general business of 
the cotton and corn plantation where the want of fertility 
had directed the attention very much to all possible aids 
from manure. Enclosing fields to be ungrazed, listing 
with the hoe and plow, and the hoe alone, and movable 
and stationary stock pens, littering with straw from the 
woods direct to the field and generally the usual practices 
of a farm where its wants were mon? than the means of 
supply for them ; cotton seed very fully tried, rotted at the 
gin house in the usual way, and put on sound and unin- 
jured also. I think success, having, due respect to the 
seasons, has much depended on deep plowing and late 
manuring. To this latter I shall confine ray remarks and 
give the reason for my opinion, so that each may test its 
correctness by his own observation. 
There is observable in all plants and animals a growing 
and bearing stage, and as the object you seek is the bear- 
ing or fruiting, the manure should be so applied as to be 
in its most powerful action, when the plant is in its fru- 
ition. This seems reasonable. Can it possibly be better 
to give all your manure to the cotton and corn when 
growing or when it is bearing, and this is too often the 
case. A short lived manure may be expended in giving 
growth to the stalk, and leaving nothing to make the ear. 
Cotton seed, early winter-rotted, is of this class, and if 
put on rotted at planting, its effects are all expended in 
the stalks with nothing left for the ears. The tendency 
of our warm climate is to run to too much stalk, and 
should be counteracted rather than stimulated. Our only 
friend that has been doing this is early drouth, always 
unthanked, and frequently regarded as an enem.y. Corn 
will stand seasons that much diminish its size and yield 
well, provided suitable rains come when the grain is mak- 
ing. The manure should be so managed as to act at this 
juncture, say June and July. Let us take corn fir our 
example, and the season equally applies to cotton and all 
other products, and your observation will make the ap- 
plication. Corn is generally planted in March, and con- 
tinues its growing stage through all May, when the bear- 
ing or fruiting stage commences and continues through 
June and July. The observant planter will then see the 
rapidity of the shooting and tasselingand pushing out the 
young ears, and if he takes the hoe he will see, just under 
the surface, innumerable thread like white roots extending 
in all directions from the guard roots and others to the dis- 
tance of eight or ten leet; then is tlie time that the land 
should be in fine order and the manure in its most power- 
ful action. These roots are in search of food and bearing 
it to the corn, and should not be cut by plow or hoe, as it 
will be too late to renew for use. 
In June and July it is in full bearing, and wants all the 
effect of the manure and rains, and on this, more than on 
the size of the stalk, is the yield dependant. All that class 
of manure that come from listing in and covering where 
grown the rubbish and surface soil, and the litter of stable 
and cow pens or compost heaps, as well from the want of 
tme as the necessity of the co operation of the earth in 
rating, reducing and preparing it for the food of plants, 
mist be applied before the crop is planted, and let this i e 
as a present. The manures I particularly-allude to are 
cottoi seed, guano and the sulphates, all-powerful in 
tliemssilves and requiring so little time in application, and 
I think-I may add, of short duration, in the homoepathic 
dose usially given. The practice. I complain of is the 
usual on of throwing out the cotton seed as it is ginned, 
where, frhn the size of the bulk, it heats, sobs and its es- 
sence and -alue passes into the air and is lost. In this 
evaporation; ts odor tells the nose, if it has not informed 
tile understa-ding, that it is wasting into the air. It is, 
perhaps, correct to say that more than one-half its value is 
lost, and without the poor excuse of its being too busy 
time. Let the cotton seed be hauled off to the field to be 
manured before it accumulates into much bulk. In the 
small heaps in the conical shapes as drawn from the 
wagons, it will not be injured by the winter rains. If 
you fear injury to your hogs or from your stock, a few 
rails adequately protect the supply for four acres, at once 
place ; or it may be put into conical heaps as dropped from 
the wagon in an enclosure at the gin-house. The seed is 
to be killed after the corn is planted, and not before, and 
let some trusty hand, with eight or ten young people or 
other inferior hands under him, open the tops of the piles 
with two or more deep chops of the hoe, and the young 
hands pour in a bushel of water, more or less ; on this let 
be placed two hoes full of dirt to retain the moisture, and 
cover it with the seed. In this state, especially if done at 
a rainy time, it, will soon heat and the vegetating prin- 
ciple be killed, which is generally the case in three or 
four weeks. This should be done in March or early in 
April, and the application to the corn in May, or when the 
corn is knee or waist high. It is well to scatter the seed 
in the furrow, near the corn, to be covered by the plows. 
Little benefit is got from sound seed, and while the cover- 
ed seed is killed, much on the outer surface of the heap 
will not be, and this is better secured at the time of kill- 
ing, to draw earth over the seed, as it better keeps the 
heat in. The effect of this manure will be visible after the 
first rain, and will be most powerful when the corn most 
needs it. 
The object is to wet well the interor of the pile and 
keep its moisture there by the dirt, and don’t let it be 
a mere plantation order, but see that it is done well, as it 
has as much use as any other work. Sound seed loses 
nearly all its value by sprouting, but is not so bad as win- 
ter-rotted seed. If the cotton seed piles are covered over 
by dirt, and the rain cases that dirt well, it keeps in the 
heat and kills all the seed better. I have never succeeded 
in killing well the outside seed. 
I have only tried guano in the last two years, and put 
on an extensive scale, but so far as I have, I think it very 
valuable, and will more than compensate for its price. 
Until better informed, I shall regard it as a powerful short 
lived manure, and for plantation purposes, on corn, use 
about 100 pounds to the acre, scattering it in the plow fur- 
row, to be covered when the corn is about knee high. 
Have it completely pulverized, as in lumps, however small, 
it must be too stimulating. lam not aware of the neces- 
sity of mixing it with charcoal ashes, plaster or other mat- 
ter. It needs moisture to set it at work, and though it is 
said to act well on all soils, I think clayey soils most suit- 
able. Mexican guano is about one-third less in value than 
thePeruvian ; and of Peruvian it is more general to use 200 
pounds to the acre. I think ten wagon loads of cotton 
seed will make more corn than ten loads on one acre, and 
for the same reason I prefer 200 pounds on two acres to 
all of it on one acre. It would extend this letter too far to 
repeat all that I have heard of the valuable effects of guano 
and the sulphates . — Alahawa Planter. 
We quite agree with the editor of the Nashville 
Gazette where he says : 
“A man that has a soul worth a sixpence must expect 
to have enemies. It is utterly impossible for the best of 
men to please the whole world, and the sooner this is 
understood, and a position taken in view of the fact, the 
better. Do right — though you have enemies. You 
cannot escape them by doing wrong. And it is little 
gain to barter away your honor and integrity, and 
divest yourself of moral courage, to gain what I Nothing. 
Better abide by the truth— frown down all opposition, 
and rejoice in the feeling which must aspire a free and in- 
dependent man.” 
