ofitld dbpps. 
TWO METHODS WITH FALL FEED. 
Ansel W. Putnam of Danvers, Mass., 
writes, in the New England Farmer, a very 
interesting and valuable article describing 
his method of using fall feed. He does not 
believe in letting it remain on the ground, 
thinking it more profitable to pasture closely 
and top-dress liberally to keep up the fer¬ 
tility of the soil. He says : 
“ Starvation kills more grass than all other 
causeB combined ; leaving the full growth 
helps to keep grass from starving; if it is 
left every year, it may, as manure, aud by 
its mechanical operations as mulch in the 
summer time, be worth as much to leave on 
the ground as to feed, but it looks to me like 
poor farming to use good gras?, for manure. 
Feed the cows with grass, feed the grass 
with the manure from the cows ; if the gray 
is manured enough you may feed it ur‘ 
November, and expect it to grow in 06 
spring and begin to lodge us early in Ju -i a * 
you will be ready to begin haying. 
“ I am working a twenty-acre far" ■“ ^ 
hod neither mowed nor fed my fl' ds ,dter 
the first of September, i must pro lei ton 
the ground grass that I made 1 l (?aKt one 
hundred dollars’ worth of mi[k* ,om ’ ttt>d ^ 
expect to grow two tons m' e l ja y 
coming season than I could ,avc & ro ' vl1 1 
had not fed tiiat grass, or - d &omethiug * n 
the place of it, which wor d have cost me a 
hundred dollars. While-ceding that grass I 
fed forty dollars’ worlJ of k rain wlUl U ‘> l «*' 1 
sold one hundred and ort y dollars’ worth of 
milk. The manure^de while feeding the 
grass and grain Wr* a11 uaed aa top-dressing, 
therefore I ttinl I have a. right to expect 
two tons roo'e of hay next year from that 
grass than T could have got if 1 had left it ou 
the groan*;, for my impression is that it 
would not be decomposed enough to feed the 
crop before the second year aftor it was left. 
My motto is, feed close and manure high, 
[ bui I am willing to change it for a better one 
when 1 can find it, I mow and feed until 
November.” 
Not much fault can be found with this 
method so far as applied to old pastures con¬ 
sisting chiefly of bine grass, red top and 
June grass. In newly-seeded land, with 
timothy, and particularly with clover, some 
leaves of grass left tmcropped, as mulch, are 
worth more as a winter protection than ma¬ 
nure in spring. Often, if not so protected, 
clover will be entirely killed by severe win¬ 
ters, aud a spring manuring would only cover 
the land with rank growth of weeds. For 
well sodded pastures this objection docs not 
exist. It is, however, rare to find farmers 
wise enough to follow Mr. Putnam’s ex¬ 
ample in feeding grain to cows in pasture for ( 
the purpose of enriching their land. We 
haven’t a particle of doubt that u light grain 
feeding continued through the summer to 
cows in pasture would be found profitable in , 
many localities where farmers have never 
thought of trying it. j 
The editor of the New England Farmer j 
adopts another method of using fall feed 
which he describes in comments on Mr. Put- t 
nam's letter. He leaves it unpastured but 
cuts a second crop about the first of Scptem- t 
ber and after that allows what remains to f 
serve as a mulch aud winter protection. We a 
quote from his comments on Mr. PctnaM’S 
letter : 
“Many farmers feed their mowings be¬ 
cause they think they cannot spare the feed c 
just now, even when they really believe that t 
the next crop of hay will he reduced more c 
than the present crop of feed. They feed ^ 
their mowings as men sometimes borrow 
money, just to enable them to squeeze along tJ 
till another pay day comes round, trusting ^ 
that something in the meantime may pos- 
sibly turn up that will help them out of the A 
difficulty. Our course has been t o make no 
account of after feed in mowings, unless it Is 
heavy enough to pay for mowing with a ma¬ 
chine. Adopting this course, we have been 
enabled to dispense with all inside fences in P c 
mowing land, and to some extent outside 
fences also. The cost of running over a field uli 
with a mowing machine and wheel-rake is kli 
so slight that the expense of gathering the 
second crop is comparatively small, while if S° 
the cows were let on the rnowiug they would 
generally injure recently seeded portions or an 
destroy other cropB in different parts of the to 
field, which, under our system, require no va 
fencing or extra protection whatever. Wo 
have no doubt that enough ' after - feed ? acI 
may be lefton a mowing field to injure iefor toc 
the next year’s crop, but usually there is not ^ 
enough grows after the first of September to gtij 
injure the grass if it is cut or fed close at that tab 
time, although there may b« exceptional 
cases. We have often cub rowen Mter than 
that date, and may do so again. W e cut a 
heavy crop last fall, jUBt befow the ground 
froze, and the roots wore n<“ r ly ®h winter- 
killed. but not because th<® Tass w as cut, for 
a portion left as au ex r^ment w ,os killed 
equally as badly. Btp a S a iust this one case 
of winter-killing of r a * s was heavy at 
the petting in of vy’ter, ' v e have had many 
other cases wher ^ w,ia perfectly evident 
that late mowit* was a Positive injury. This 
would be pari uiar, y tlie <>a se on dry kooks 
that are mu ' “Posed to the cold, drying 
winds of v‘ Uir and early spring. Wo have 
several t fies 11 ad young clover checked se¬ 
verely 4 t * lis Wu y> and sometimes badly 
killed' 
'pp. last would undoubtedly be the best 
jjjpjod if it included liberal grain feeding to 
t .vs during the summer months to increase 
rie production of mauure. Doing away 
with inside fences Is an important item, 
while on land smooth enough to allow the 
use of a mower and i ieh enough to produce 
u good second crop, cutting and soiling is the 
true method. The trouble is that too much 
of our mowing lands are not rich enough to 
produce a seeond crop worth cutting, so tlie 
only alternatives are to pasture or leave as a 
mulch. 
(Jap <%mrmg. 
RENOVATION J F FARMS NEAR CITIES. 
A WRINKLE ABOUT GRASS. 
“ ‘ That’s a new wrinkle, sure enough,’ 
said a friend who had been cultivating past¬ 
ure aud hay-fields all liis life, yet had never 
noticed the fact of our common green grass 
shedding its roots in the winter, just like it 
loses its lops. Every one who has given a 
strawberry bed a spring weeding has noticed 
how very easily shoots of grass are pulled out 
then, although in the summer and autumn 
they are so very tenacious of their ground. 
In mellow soil grasssod can be rolled off with 
a prong hoe, uud we know how it is turned 
over with ease at tr,e same season by iiogs. 
This has much concern with grass culture 
for, in the short term which our climate 
allows for the growth of grass it is pluiu that 
prilorMay mustbeeapeo 
trying to glass, the new roots of which are 
then Out issuing from the subterranean stems 
wuioli lie In the soil very near the surface. 
Repeated trampling on Jawns or pasture isat 
LUat critical time specially injurious, although 
a single pressing or rolling is quite advan¬ 
tageous by closing the earth into contact 
with all parts of the stemu which are about 
to scud down lresh roots. Where fresh sod 
is to be laid, the policy of paring uud placing 
it quite early in the spring becomes, in the 
light of this ‘wrinkle,’ very obvious.'!—W., 
Tyrone, Penn., in N. T. Tribune. 
Ghaks “ sheds its roots” just the same as it 
loses its top—that is, they are destroyed by 
frost. With the roots, however, it is alter¬ 
nate freezing and thawing which does the 
damage, the part in frozen earth being sun¬ 
dered from the remainder. It often happens 
that after deep freezing of tko ground there 
is ti thaw extending two or three inches 
deep. Should this freeze again suddenly the 
lower part ol‘ tlie roots imbedded in frozen 
ground would he broken oil, leaving a sod 
wldch would present a very even surface 
and eould be easily turned over or “pared 
oil.” This is of course an advantage in tak¬ 
ing such a time for removing sod to cover 
lawns, &e., as the sod is much more ensiiy 
gathered then, it is also true that this upper 
series of roots will strike down again as soon 
as vegetation begins to start in the spring, 
though often when the roots are severed by 
frost close to the surface the start will he slow 
and feeble. 
We have no faith whatever in “grass 
shedding its roots in winter” on any other 
theory than explained above. It is uot a 
consequence of the plant losing its leaves but 
the direct action of frost on the roots. With 
clover roots which strike directly downwards 
the ellects of alternate freezing and thawing 
are much more disastrous. Frequently the 
tap-root is snapped in two and there being 
few or no lateral x-oots to hold it down, the 
upper portion is thrown upon the surface. 
Acres of such winter-killed clover may be 
seen nearly every spring. 
Successful Potato Growing.—A corres¬ 
pondent of the Vermont Record and Farmer 
furnishes the following estimate of the costs 
and profit of potato culture :—“Much grum¬ 
bling is done because of the Potato beetle, 
but a man can raise just as many and just as 
good potatoes as before the beetle came 
along. A large profit can be made on them 
and it pays well to raise them. It would cost 
to get an acre of ground iu order, $2 ; culti¬ 
vating and putting ou Paris green, $3; dig¬ 
ging aud storing, S3 ,• interest (at $50 per 
acre), $3.50 ; total cost of one acre of pota¬ 
toes, $15. We can raise 200 bushels per acre 
which, at 40 cents, would come to $80 : de¬ 
duct cost, ($15,) and we have a net yield of 
$65. We would keep the laud rich and ob¬ 
tain a net profit of $4o or $50 per acre.” 
ed Large ci aes afford such facilities for get- 
se ting ma vare that it would seem that their 
at neighborhood ought always to bloom with 
»y fortuity as a garden. That this is not always 
rj t tjj- fact is too plainly told by frequent ad¬ 
ds certisements of such lauds at extremely low 
k 3 prices, showing that the soil has been ex- 
•g hauBted below the point of profitable pro- 
rii duetion. A correspondent of th© Tribune 
®* writing on this subject says : 
MoBt laborers can support their families 
better upon $1.50 per day than they can from 
s the number of acres of land they can till in 
these localities in tlie prevalent style of farm- 
=e ing. At the game time the new land of the 
^ newer .States can be purchased very' low, and 
°* for crops and grazlug one acre produces 
1C ‘ more than five in the older parts of the coun- 
6 try ; bo that all the advantages of nearer 
markets and settled society are not sufficient 
1 to keep these worn-out farms in demand. 
'° The whole story of the case lies in the fact 
* e that these farms are worn out, that is, ex- 
a hausted; in other words, washed and skinned; 
planted and cropped without any corre¬ 
sponding return of manure. Rut to the 
earnest, intelligent farmer, who values tlie 
> home in the older portion of the country, 
t- these farms are capable of being made valua- 
- r ble aud productive. Taken at the price at 
j 8 which they can now be purchase d, §50 to 
u $100 per acre, and manured, that is, restored 
d to their former fertile condition, their ex¬ 
it pense would be lesB than the value of pro- 
l‘ ductive land in a near locality to market, 
ti An acquaintance of mine purchased 200 
d acres of barren land within a few miles of 
"• Winchester, Va., in 1854, for $25 per acre. 
This was a higher price than the land was 
,l worth for the then prevailing style of farm- 
y ing iu that locality, but the land was near the 
u town uud lay favorable for improvement. 
, With a span of mules and ten bags of clover- 
,t seed the purchaser began farming. He 
h turned over fifty acres in the following three 
” years and seeded to clover, and again seeded 
L without cropping, aud when Sheridan took 
d his famous ride down the valley the fifty 
g acres were worth $200 each for the purpose 
e of raising farm produce. A similar ex per i- 
’ merit was recently tried with a farm of sixty 
t acres in Connecticut, mostly exhausted to a 
barren sand-bank, with only a few weeds 
^ and scrub trees upon it. In six years’ time 
forty acres of the land were recovered so as 
'■ to yield premium farm crops. The fertilizers 
chiefly used were muck and buckwheat, and 
8 thtn clover. At the same time of this ex- 
L> perimeut I purchased 100 acres in West- 
a Chester County, N. Y., at $40 per acre, not 
level or easy of cultivation like the last, but 
| high and rough. The land was as barren as 
if there had been no sod upon it for years, 
M with all the storms washing off the soil. The 
attempt at a recovery has been less success- 
‘ ful, as the farm is more difficult of access, 
and but a part of it can be tilled, while the 
operations have been different and with no 
well authenticated facts and experiments to 
1 start with, Tlie soil is porous, or rather non- 
retentive, and manure placed in it seems to 
fritter away, but a series of experiments 
have proved that even the roughest, poorest 
luml can be restored without great expense. 
The first experiments were wi th bone, gyp¬ 
sum and muck, each applied by itself upon 
portions of lowland, hillside and hilltop. 
With $40 in bone, $10 in gypsum, and $25 
expended in digging muck, the improvement 
in each case at the end of two years was such 
as to encourage me to continue the applica¬ 
tion of all or either. The value of the crops 
growiug were more than 500 per cent, above 
that where no application had been made, 1 
and the expense per acre was not $5. Where 
there was no grass grass grew, no pasture i 
became pasture, and with the aid of $10 per £ 
acre iu barnyard manure there grew $40 1 
worth of shelled corn to the acre, and this j 
upon unusually' unfavorably situated land, J 
Whether these applications of fertilizers will g 
be permanent for pasture I have not yet had c 
I time to prove, but the result shows that the i 
land has all its native virtues left yet, and r 
only requires manuring to make it produce : 1 
and the crops received will pay the outlay t 
handsomely. But the most profitable and f 
marked result of experimenting has been a 
with hurdling a drove of hogs upon an acre - 
or two at a time, until completely rooted le 
over, and then seeding to permanent pasture, c 
The clover, orchard grass and timothy, upon g 
ground so covered, was last year more than ai 
two tons to the acre on rough land where n: 
nothing grew before. m 
LIBERAL MANURING PROFITABLE. 
Dr. Johnson used to say of Scotland that 
it was a country where every man had a 
mouthful but nobody had a good bellyful. It 
is something like this principle which too 
many farmers use in manuring their land. 
They apply a little manure every year, or 
more often a little every five or six years, 
and trust to Nature and the resources of the 
soil, rains and the atmosphere for the rest. 
The result is that the land increases slowly 
in fertility', if at all, while it should be the 
aim of a good farmer to increase the fertility 
of every acre, not only certainly, but as rap¬ 
idly as possible. It costs no more to make 
an acre fertile enough to produce Its maxi¬ 
mum crops in one year, or at most two, than 
it does to accomplish the same object by 
gradual processes through eight, ton or 
twenty years. The difference between hav¬ 
ing the soil fitted to produce fts largest crops 
at tlie beginning and through a ten-years’ 
occupancy of the land or waiting till the end 
of that period and growing poor crops mean¬ 
while is apparent. But it is not appreciated 
generally as it should be. There is profound 
philosophy in tlie remark of the English no¬ 
bleman who asked his tenant what made a 
certain spot in the field grow so much 
stronger and better grain than the rest. 
“That,” said the farmer, “that is muck 
midden”—/. c, a place where manure had 
been piled. “And why,” asked tlie noble¬ 
man, “ why don’t you make the whole field 
muck midden V ’ The point of the story lies 
in the fact that it has always been consid¬ 
ered practically impossible to obtain enough 
manure to secure the best results on all laud. 
Farmers have been compelled to use manure 
sparingly in order to make it extend over 
their fields as far as possible, and even then 
they have failed in part and only manured 
one-third to one-fourth of their tilled land. 
The result has been that much of the labor 
employed has been on poor crops, when it 
might by the use of fertilizers have been on 
good. We believe in purchasing manure 
from the stable whenever it can be had, and 
if rot, then such commercial fertilizers U 3 
experience proves to be valuable. It is very 
rare that the difference between a good crop 
and a poor one will not pay the expense of 
buying manures to make the crop. If it will 
not pay, the probabilities are that nothing 
the farmer can do will pay, and he hud bet¬ 
ter sell out and quit the business. It does 
not need a great quantity or heavy outlay in 
concentrated fertilizers to secure a large 
crop. In the experiments of Mr. Lawf.s in 
England an average crop of 48% bushels of 
barley has been grown more than twenty 
years in succession by the use of 200 lbs, of 
superphosphate and ammonical salts yearly. 
The average crop is as good as where four¬ 
teen loads per acre of rich stable manure 
were used. There is a double advantage in 
growing these large crops. They cost less 
per bushel, and if the soil is rightly man 
aged otherwise, it is constantly increasing in 
fertility and value. 
-- 
ASHJLS AND LIME. 
, A Michigan correspondent of the Rural 
asks us the following questions : 
Eds. Rural:—W ill you please give me, and 
numerous other readers,your opinion of ash¬ 
es as a fertilizer, and answer the following . 
What is the difference iu the worth or a 
bushel of leached and uuleached ashes as fer¬ 
tilizers r What is the difference in the worth 
or a bushel of unlencht-d ashes and a bushel 
of lime for the same 1 What could one safely 
afford to pay per bushel for uuleached a-ilie; 
to use on land worth $125 per acre lor grow¬ 
ing' wheat and grass, the land Is of clay, 
grovel and sand mixed, and is in a good state 
of cultivation 1 Lime can be bought here at 
from 20 cents to 25 cents per bushel, leached 
ashes can be had for hauling five miles.—r. 
Tbe comparative value of ashes and lime 
depends wholly on circumstances and can 
only be determined by experiment. 
Generally speaking we would say that 
ashes are almost always of value, jvhile on 
somesoiri lime has comparatively little effect. 
It is best to make a trial of the lime at the 
price you name, 20 to 25 cents for unslacked 
per bushel; but gather all the ashes you can 
get for hauling five miles whether leached 
or unleached. On land worth $125 per acre 
unleaehed ashes from hard wood, beech and 
maple, should be worth 10 cents per bushel. 
Ashes from pine are not worth so much, as 
they contain less potash. Those situated so 
favorably as our correspondent—able to get 
all the ashes they want for hauling five miles 
—ought to test the comparative value of 
leached and unleaehed, and instruct the agri¬ 
cultural papers on the subject, instead of 
going to them for information. Our opinion 
at the best would only be based on experi¬ 
ments such as our correspondent might easily 
make for himself. 
_ 9 J ' 
--— 2 ® 
