THE farmer’s manual. 
herbage is the most natural feed for this animal at this 
season ; but if you have no such range, potatoes and 
carrots, (not turnips,) may be used as a substitute. 
Secure them carefully against your grain, mowing, or 
young clover grounds, which you design for mowing ; 
the damage they will do you by feeding on these, 
would be greater than they could repay. 
Some farmers complain that red clover, when sown 
for mowing upon their orchard grounds, causes the 
trees to wither and decay. This may be remedied by 
sowing plaster of Paris upon your clover ; your or- 
chards will flourish as well as upon English mowing; 
one bushel to the acre in the spring, or fall, annually, 
will answer. It is of no consequence to inquire, why 
a crop so fertilizing as clover, should injure the or- 
chard, nor why the plaster should prevent it; facts 
are stubborn things, and are generally, all that are of 
importance in good farming. Others have found 
from experience that red clover may grow to advan- 
tage upon orchard grounds, without injuring the trees, 
provided the clover is fed off before it blossoms ; and 
thus fertilize their orchard grounds by feeding their 
clover. From this it appears, that the injury arises 
from the heads, or blossoms of the clover ; but the 
manner in which the blossom produces this effect, is 
again inexplicable, and so in fact are all the opera- 
tions of nature. One useful fact that shall enable the 
farmer to produce two spires of grass where only one 
had grown before, is of more real value, than a whole 
volume of nice philosophical disquisitions upon the 
operations of nature, in producing this grass; the first 
may be done; but the latter no man ever discovered, 
and probably never will. 
Ploughing, 
The season is now opening to commence your 
ploughing ; every farmer, and even farmer’s boy, 
feels as if he knew how to hold and drive plough, bet- 
ter than the man who writes books ; all this may be 
