14r 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
Walks and Talks on tiie Farm—Ho. 133. 
[COPYHIGHT SECURED.] 
We have had remarkably fine weather for finish¬ 
ing up our fall work, and getting ready for winter. 
I have plowed the corn-stubble, the potato land, 
and fifteen acres where we had mangels and ruta¬ 
bagas. I also broke up in September sixteen acres 
of timothy and clover sod, and iu November fifteen 
acres of clover sod. The latter I propose to sow 
to barley in the spring. We ought to have plowed 
it six weeks earlier, and “fall-fallowed” it. But 
we were short of pasture, and I kept it for the 
sheep as tong as possible. They ate it down very 
bare. We plowed it with a three-horse jointer plow, 
and every particle of sod was buried out of sight. 
We shall not plow it again in the spring. A gang- 
plow or cultivator, with the free use of the har¬ 
rows will, I think, give us a fine seed-bed for the 
barley and clover seed. “I think,” said the Dea¬ 
con, “ you would get just as much barley, if not 
more, if you had let the sod lie undisturbed until 
spring. The rains will wash a good deal of the 
richness out of this plowed land.” If it was light, 
sandy land, there would be some truth in this idea. 
But as the soil is mostly rather a stiff loam, I think 
it will be all the better for the fall-plowing. The 
knolls are sandy, but what the rains wash out of 
these, the lower land in the same field will retain, 
before the water gets into the underdrains. And I 
propose to give the knolls a slight top-dressing of 
well-rotted manure. “ You summer-fallowed this 
field for wheat,” said the Deacon, before it was 
6eeded down, and I should think, instead of seeding 
it down again with the barley, you would sow wheat 
after the barley, and seed down with the wheat.” 
Perhaps this would give me the greatest immediate 
profit. In fact, I think this would be the case, but 
this piece lies between a field of winter wheat on 
one side, and the field where we had mangels on 
the other. The wheat will be seeded down in the 
spring, and the mangel lot will be sown to barley, 
and seeded, and I want to seed this middle lot, so 
that I can take up the fences, and throw the whole 
into one forty-acre lot, all seeded down with clover. 
The question of fencing has, I am sorry to-say, a 
good deal to do with my system of rotation. 
“ I see,” said the Deacon, “that Mr. Geddes has 
written another article for the Country Gentleman, 
against your pet summer-fallow theory. And Mr. 
Root also contends, that plowing and working land, 
instead of enriching it, as you claim, tends to ex¬ 
haust it.”—“I know he does,” I said, “ but what 
does our old and experienced friend Dewey tell us. 
He had an old fence between two lots, which had 
been worked and cropped for many years. On re¬ 
moving the fence and plowing the land, and treat¬ 
ing it precisely as the land on each side, he found 
that tills strip of new land, neither at first nor after¬ 
ward, produced as good crops, as the land which 
had been cultivated and cropped for years. Those 
who contend that tillage will not enrich land, base 
their opinion on the fact that it adds nothing to the 
store of plant-food in the soil. But they overlook 
the important truth that fertility depends, not on. 
the aggregate amount of plant-food in the soil, but 
oil the comparatively small amount that is in a 
soluble or available condition. Now, while tillage 
will not add to the soil a single atom of potash, 
phosphoric acid, and other elements of plant-food, 
it will, and does, favor the decomposition of the 
organic, and the disintegration of the inorganic 
matters, lying dormant in the land. 
If you should make a pit or hole in your barn¬ 
yard, and should throw your manure into it, and if 
your buildings are not provided with spouts, and 
the water from the yard flows into this pit, the ma¬ 
nure will probably be so wet, that no fermentation 
can take place. The water excludes the air, and 
the manure will remain raw and dormant for 
months or years. If you drain off the excess of 
water, and turn over the manure, so as to let in the 
air, fermentation will be likely to commence at 
once, and this heap of raw manure will be decom¬ 
posed, and the inert plant-food which it contains, 
will be changed to active, fertilizing material. And 
so it is with the soil. Drain off the excess of wa¬ 
ter. Stir it frequently and thoroughly, so as to let 
in the air, and the inert plant-food which it con¬ 
tains, will be gradually decomposed, and will be¬ 
come slowly available. 
“But suppose,” said the Deacon, “ the land does 
not contain any inert plant-food.”—“ Then,” I re¬ 
plied, “ cultivation will not enrich it. The poor, 
sandy knolls on your farm and mine contain very 
little of this inert plant-food. They are dry, and so 
loose that the air penetrates into the soil without 
plowing. And yet these knolls are plowed deeper 
and better, than the richer and heavier land in the 
intervales. If the ground is dry and hard, and you 
have not a good point and a careful plowman, the 
plow will be likely to turn a furrow only four or 
five inches deep on the clay spots, while it will go 
almost beam-deep on the loose, sandy knolls, which 
hardly need plowing at all. Drain these clayey in¬ 
tervales, and plow them frequently and well, until 
the soil is deep and mellow, and you will soon see 
whether draining and tillage will not enrich the 
land.” 
And now 7 in regard to Mr. Geddes’ recent expe¬ 
rience in summer-fallowing. The facts he gives are 
interesting. He had ten acres of land that had be¬ 
come infested with quack-grass ( Triticum repens). 
In the fall of 1872 he gave the piece a thorough 
plowing, just before winter set in. In the spring 
and summer of 1873 the land was worked to kill the 
quack, no crop being sown. In other words, the 
piece was “summer-fallowed.” "VVe will call this 
field No. 1. 
Another field of 31 acres, which we will call No. 
2, was sown to barley in the spring of 1873. Pre¬ 
vious treatment not given. But Mr. Geddes tells 
us that the expense of working it was about the 
same per acre, as for the summer-fallowed field. 
After the barley was off, this field was plowed once, 
and sown to wheat. Four or five acres of the field, 
on the slopes and ridges, were treated to a dressing 
of manure. 
Another piece of nine acres, lying alongside of 
No. 2, with a fence between, had been in grass 
many years. It was a rough pasture, and needed 
re-seeding. It seems to have occurred to Mr. Ged¬ 
des at the last moment that, as he was going to sow 
No. 2 to wheat and seed it down, it would be a 
good plan to take away the fence, and break up 
this old pasture, drill in some wheat, and seed it 
down again with timothy and clover. This he pro¬ 
ceeded to do. The fence was removed, the land 
phewed, some manure put on the sharp slopes and 
ridges, and the wheat drilled in Sept. 27. This we 
will call field No. 3. And now for the result. 
No. 1.—Summer-fallow, was sown Sept. 9 and 10 
with wheat. “ Along one side, a narrow strip was 
sown with Clawson wheat, as a comparative test— 
the remainder of the field being sown with Diehl 
wheat. The crop came up finely, so that iu five 
days the lines of the drilling were plainly seen. 
The fall growth was very strong, and the wheat 
did not suffer in the very hard, open winter which 
followed.” The yield on this summer-fallowed 
field was 38 bushels of wheat per acre. Mr. Ged¬ 
des does not seem to have kept the Diehl and the 
Clawson separate, but he tells us, judging, I sup¬ 
pose, from the narrow strip of Clawson, that “ had 
the summer-fallow being sown to Clawson wheat, 
we should probably have had 50 bushels per acre.” 
Field No. 2, barley stubble, was sown to Clawson 
wheat on the 13—16th of Sept. The yield was 
nearly 27£ bushels per acre. 
Field No. 3, old pasture, produced 21 bushels of 
Clawson wheat per acre. 
These are the facts. Now let us look at them. 
Field No. 2, in the summer of 1873, produced 34 
bushels of six-rowed%arley per acre, and after¬ 
wards it produced 271 bushels of Clawson wheat. 
Field No. 1, summer-fallow, produced 3S bushels 
of Diehl wheat per acre. Had it been sown to Claw¬ 
son, Mr. Geddes thinks it would have produced 50 
bushels per acre. To make the experiment strict¬ 
ly comparative, therefore, we must either “ guess ” 
liow much the barley stubble would have produced, 
if, like the summer-fallow, it had been sown to 
Diehl, or how much the summer-fallow would have 
produced, if it had been sown to Clawson. I pre¬ 
fer to take Mr. Geddes’ own figures. 
Field No. 1, summer-fallow, 50 bushels Clawson 
wheat per acre, (a) GO lbs. per bushel.3,000 B)s. 
Field No. 2, 34 bushels barley, (a) 48 lbs. 1,032 lbs.. 
“ “ 27M bush. Clawson wheat, @G0 ®>s.l,G50 lbs. 
Total grain per acre.3,282 lbs. 
In other words, the two crops give us about 41 
bushels more grain per acre, than the one crop on 
the summer-fallow. 
Mr. Geddes weighed the straw and chaff, and I, 
for one, want to thank him for doing so. My own 
rule is to calculate that a fair crop of wheat will 
afford about 100 lbs. of straw to each bushel of 
wheat, varying less or more, according to the sea¬ 
son, and the luxuriance of the crop. Mr. Geddes 
found that his summer-fallowed Diehl wheat pro¬ 
duced 112 lbs. of straw and chaff to 60 lbs. of 
wheat. The Clawson wheat, after barley, produced 
about 60 lbs. of straw and chaff to 60 lbs. of wheat. 
From all this it is quite evident that the summer- 
fallowed land was in prime condition. The soil was 
fine, mellow, and moist. The wheat came up im¬ 
mediately, and was uninjured by the winter. It 
was evidently a grand crop, and I have no doubt 
the clover this year, and the clover-seed afterward, 
will be such as a good farmer likes to see growing 
on his land. The barley-stubble wheat had more or 
less manure. Mr. Geddes has some of the best land 
in the State, and knows how to farm it. It is not a 
farm like mine that has been run down by being 
worked on shares. He is not, like me, engaged iu 
the slow and tedious task of trying to renovate 
neglected and weedy land. He has owned this splen¬ 
did farm for forty years or more, and it has had 
all the benefit of his long experience and ripe judg¬ 
ment. If wheat after barley is a system to be 
generally recommended, it should show good re¬ 
sults on this farm. And in fact, the object of Mr. 
Geddes’ interesting letter is to show that this sys¬ 
tem is more profitable than summer-fallowing. 
“And he certainly succeeds in showing it,” said 
the Deacon, “he gets more money from the two 
crops than from the one crop.”—I will talk about 
that presently. What now interests me, is the 
condition of the land. Mr. Geddes tells us that 
“the severe weather of winter, spring, and early 
summer, told very decidedly ” on this barley stub¬ 
ble and pasture wheat, “and when the clover seed 
was sow 7 n in the spring, the wheat was so small, 
rthat 15 bushels per acre was as high as it would 
have been put as likely to yield, by any experienced 
judge.” We all know what this means. I had 
three or four acres of just such wheat last year. 
The land was dry and hard, the wheat came up late 
and weak, the winter, and especially the spring 
weather, weakened it still more, and the result 
was one-third to half a crop. But this was not all, 
and this is the point I wish to make. The weeds 
came in, and the clover is poorer, and the land iu 
far worse condition than where the crop of wheat 
was good. I need not complete the picture. It 
will be three or four years before we have any 
chance to kill these weeds, and in the meantime 
they will go on increasing, and producing seed to 
bother us in the manure and in future crops. 
The barley and the wheat together, brought in 
more money than the wheat alone. This was 
because wheat happened to be unusually low in 
1874, and barley unusually high in 1873 and 1874. 
We summer-fallow for wheat, on the idea that 
wheat is usually our best paying crop. But it may 
well be, that barley on suitable soils is more profit¬ 
able than wheat. If so, summer-fallow—or rather 
fall-fallow for barley, and seed down with the bar¬ 
ley crop instead of with wheat. 
In one of Mr. Lawes’ experiments, where the 
land was summer-fallowed and then sown to wheat, 
the crop was a little more than from two crops of 
wheat following each other on adjoining land. 
Mr. Geddes’ two crops, one of barley and one of 
wheat, yield a little more than the one crop on the 
summer-fallow, and yet the difference is not so 
great as might be expected. The advantage of the 
