374, 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[October. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 94. 
We are through thrashing, and can now take 
a breathing spell for a few days. It has been a 
trying season. Poor upland has suffered from 
drouth, and undrained lowland has suffered from 
water. Some of my corn was drowned out, 
and some of the late, planted on the sandy 
knolls, withered up just as it commenced to 
ear. The truth is, no season suits a poor far¬ 
mer. Some of my wheat this year could not 
have yielded over live bushels per acre, while 
other parts of the same field must have yielded 
thirty-five or forty bushels. About 200 acres of 
my farm is what is called “rolling land.” The 
knolls are full of limestone rocks, and the soil 
is thin and of a light, sandy nature; while the 
level land is comparatively free from stones, and 
the soil is deeper and heavier, though not clay¬ 
ey. Before it is drained, it looks like clay, and 
bakes in spots as hard as a brick, but after it 
has been drained a year or two, and well worked, 
these “clay spots,” as the men formerly called 
them, prove to be a rich, friable loam. It was 
here that I got my good wheat. The moment 
the reaper struck one of these underdrained 
valleys, the rake had all it could do to keep the 
platform clear, while on the sandy knolls the 
reel barely reached the grain, and the reaper 
had to run two or three rods to get a sheaf large 
enough to bind. This spring I saw something 
was the matter with the wheat on these knolls, 
and thought of winter-kill, Hessian fly, wire- 
worms, etc.; but it is j ust 'poverty —this and 
nothing more. 
I have thought that this poor yield of the 
sandy knolls was due to the fact that they had 
been plowed very deep. They were full of 
stones, and we made a business of getting them 
out by plowing round and round, and turning 
the furrows down hill. In this way, the land 
was plowed a foot or fifteen inches deep, bring¬ 
ing raw, poor sandy soil to the surface. Last 
year I had wheat on a knoll treated in this way, 
and it was about as good wheat as any in the 
field, and the previous crop of barley was also 
just as good as the rest of the field. But the 
land had been well manured. This year my 
wheat was not manured, and the sandy knolls 
were exceedingly light, and the clover on them 
is by no means as good as I like to see. 
One of my neighbors had a field of similar 
soil to these knolls of mine, which he summer- 
fallowed, and sowed to Diehl w'heat; and I un¬ 
derstand that he only got fifteen bushels per 
acre, and the grain is so inferior that it will 
shrink away one third in cleaning Another 
neighbor, on adjoining laud, near his barn-yard, 
and likely on this account to have received more 
or less manure in previous years, had over thirty 
bushels per acre of as handsome Diehl wheat as 
could be desired. 
The Deacon thinks this does not say much 
for summer-fallowing. But I never supposed 
any one ever summer-fallowed such light, sandy 
soil with any expectation of enriching it. What 
I have advocated is summer-fallowing land of a 
clayey nature. Our clay loams usually abound 
in latent plant-food, and a summer fallow favors 
its decomposition, and renders it available. But 
light, sandy soils are porous enough already, and 
the organic matter they contain will decompose 
rapidly enough, without constant stirring and 
exposure to the atmosphere. 
My wheat turned out better than I expected. 
Fourteen acres of it was after wheat, and 
eight after oats. Both these fields were seeded 
down with clover the spring of 1870, but failed ; 
and there was nothing to be done but risk them 
again with wheat. The remainder was after 
barley. In all, there was not quite forty acres, 
and we had 954 bushels of Diehl wheat. This 
is not so bad in the circumstances ; but I shall 
not be content until I can average, taking one 
year with another, thirty-five to forty bushels 
per acre. If the land had been rich enough, there 
would unquestionably have been forty bush¬ 
els per acre this year. That is to say, tli e season 
was quite capable of producing this amount; 
and I think the mechanical condition of the 
land was also equal to it; all that was needed 
was sufficient available plant-food in the soil. 
Take the field of fourteen acres, where wheat 
followed wheat, as an illustration of a question 
which is now occupying the attention of many 
scientific farmers and investigators. The two 
crops together yielded forty-five bushels per 
acre, or twenty-three bushels in 1870, and twen¬ 
ty-two bushels in 1871. The field has had no 
manure of any amount for years. In fact, since 
the land was cleared, forty or fifty years ago, I 
presume all the manure that has ever been ap¬ 
plied would not, in the aggregate, be equal to 
more than a good crop of clover hay. The 
available plant-food required to produce these 
two crops of wheat came from the soil itself, 
and from the rain, dews, and atmosphere. The 
land is now seeded down with clover, and with 
the aid of a bushel or two of plaster per acre 
next spring, it is not improbable that, if mown 
twice for hay next year, it will yield in the two 
crops three tons of hay per acre. 
Now, three tons of clover hay contain about 
33 pounds of phosphoric acid, 90 pounds of 
potash, and 150 pounds of nitrogen. 
The last crop of Diehl wheat, of twenty-two 
bushels per acre, and say 1,500 pounds of straw, 
would contain: 
In the grain. In the straw. In total crop. 
Phosphoric acid, .tilths. 3^&s. lS^lbs. 
Potash.. . 9% 1614 
Nitrogen.23 914 3214 
It seems very unkind in this crop of wffieat 
not to give me more than twenty-two bushels 
per acre, when the clover plants coming after 
will find phosphoric acid enough for forty bush¬ 
els of wheat, and potash and nitrogen enough for 
nearly 100 bushels per acre. And, confessedly, 
these are the three most important constituents 
of plant-food. Why, then, did I get only twen¬ 
ty-two bushels of wheat per acre ? I got twenty- 
three bushels on the same land the year pre¬ 
vious, and it is not improbable that if I had 
sown the same land to wheat again this fall, I 
should get twelve or fifteen bushels per acre 
again next year. But the clover will find plant- 
food enough for forty bushels. 
Why did I not get forty bushels per acre ? A 
scientific answer to this question would be ex¬ 
ceedingly interesting and useful, and recent 
investigations lead us to believe that it will not 
be long in forthcoming. In the mean time, we 
may safely conclude that the roots of wheat are 
so constituted that we can not get a maximum 
growth of wheat without having in the soil a 
far larger amount of available nitrogen than is 
required for the growth of a maximum crop of 
clover. And yet a maximum crop of clover 
contains twice as much nitrogen as a maximum 
crop of wheat. 
What I want is, instead of getting forty-five 
bushels of wheat per acre in two crops, to get 
it in one crop. The three tons of clover hay 
that the field will yield per acre next year will 
contain much more than the necessary amount 
of plant-food required for such a crop. If this 
clover was plowed under, or consumed on the 
land by sheep, and the land was then sown to 
wheat, why should it not yield forty bushels of 
wheat per acre? The land would certainly 
contain plant-food enough. But it would not 
all be in an available condition. The roots of 
the wheat would only be able to reach a portion 
of it. Mr. Lawes, in a recent address, referring 
to his long-continued and carefully conducted 
experiments, stated that “a mixture of 300 
pounds of superphosphate and 200 pounds of 
ammonia salts, applied every year for nineteen 
years, has yielded almost exactly the same 
amount of barley as fourteen tons of dung ap¬ 
plied annually for the same period.” The aver¬ 
age of these nineteen crops of barley grown 
every year on the same land, with the above 
two manures, was about fifty-three of our bush¬ 
els per acre. To produce this result, one acre 
had received during the nineteen years 266 tons 
of manure, and the other acre only about 44 
tons. Mr. Lawes remarks: “ About 200 pounds 
of nitrogen was annually supplied in the dung, 
but with it there was no over-luxuriance, and 
no more crop than where 41 pounds of nitrogen 
was supplied in the form of ammonia or nitric- 
acid. How is this to be accounted for?” He 
states that experiments are now being made at 
Rotliamsted that may throw more light on this 
subject. 
One thing is clear, that if 41 pounds of nitro¬ 
gen, in the form of ammonia or nitric acid, will 
have as great an immediate effect as 200 pounds 
of nitrogen in barn-yard manure, it is very im¬ 
portant for us to ferment and decompose our 
manure as much as possible before burying it in 
the soil. And it is very likely that applying it 
as a top-dressing to the land, where it would for 
several months be exposed to the atmosphere, 
and where the rains and dews would dissolve 
out the soluble matter and carry it into the soil, 
and distribute it more completely, would render 
it still more immediately effective. John John¬ 
ston and other good farmers have found from 
long experience that such is the case where the 
manure is applied as a top-dressing on grass 
land in the fall, and the field plowed up for 
corn the followdng spring. 
A year ago, as I mentioned at the time, I had 
ten acres of wheat seeded down with clover, 
but on which the clover failed. I wished very 
much to get it into clover, and could hardly 
make up my mind to plow it up. I thought 
the clover might still come in. And so, imme¬ 
diately after harvest, I top-dressed it with barn¬ 
yard manure, thinking that, if the clover came 
in, the manure would help it, and if it did not, 
that it would at any rate help any crop I might 
put on the land in the spring. 
The clover did not come in. And so, with great 
reluctance, I this spring plowed it up, and 
drilled in three bushels of peas and one bushel 
of oats per acre. The manure put on the pre¬ 
vious September was of good quality, pretty 
well rotted, and we put on a liberal dressing, 
say fifteen tons per acre. It was spread as fast 
as drawn. The weather was hot and dry, and 
some of my neighbors thought the manure 
would all be burnt up, or at any rate that nearly 
all the virtue in it would evaporate and be lost, 
I never had any fears on this score. We har¬ 
rowed it once or twice last fall, and re-spread 
any portion that the harrows pulled together; 
and there the manure lay, exposed on this bare 
ground, through the fall and winter, until it was 
plowed under in the spring. 
The result fully came up to my expectations.. ■ 
