THE BUBAL HEW-V©RHER. 
FEt 41 
knowledge, experiment with them in their 
own fields. Each farmer might then be en¬ 
abled to answer the question for himself. 
THE COMPOST HEAP. 
It is probable that the use of the compost 
heap is almost as old as the use of manure. It 
has long been known that if muck be mixed 
with manure and the mixture allowed to fer¬ 
ment, a compound will be obtained nearly or 
quite equal, load for load, to pure stable man¬ 
ure. It is certain that the muck is turned into 
a more available fertilizer when passed 
through the compost heap than when applied 
alone. In countries where manure is greatly 
needed, farmers are forced to understand that 
the compost heap offers the best laboratory 
for the manufacture of fertilizer from night- 
soil, muck, refuse, urine and dead animals. 
The extended use of chemical fertilizers tends 
to turn farmers away from composts. The 
use of fertilizers tends to discourage the keep¬ 
ing of extra stock and renders the farmers 
less anxious to turn every available waste pro¬ 
duct into manure. Fertilizers represent cash 
and after every bad season there is a general 
revival of the compost heap, and even an ef¬ 
fort to enrich the heap by adding ground bone 
or potash salts to the muck and manure. The 
usual argument against the compost heap is 
that the manure is not enough better to pay 
for the labor necessary to make the heap and 
work it over. The growing use of manure- 
spreading machinery necessitates a more care¬ 
ful handling and preparation of manure. 
Manure from the compost heaps is in just the 
proper mechanical condition for use in these 
machines. There is no quicker or handier 
way of disposing of refuse, sods, muck, weeds, 
etc., than to rot them down in a compost heap. 
•Surelj , dead animals are best disposed of in 
this way. The most common fermenting 
agents used in the compost heap are stable 
manure and night-soil. It is probably true 
that this is the most profitable use to which 
night-soil can be put. lu many instances, 
however, heaps of sods, muck or straw are 
fermented without any manure. Layers of 
wood ashes or potash salts placed through the 
pile will, if plenty of moisture is applied, pro¬ 
duce the desired effect. Lime and salt are 
also beneficial and in olden times many good 
compost heaps were fermented by their use. 
For the purpose of enlisting the attention of 
those who have thus far made no use of 
the compost heap, the following notes have 
been prepared. 
MANUFACTURE OF COMPOST. 
T. H. HOSKINS, M. D. 
Compost heaps in New England; straw in a 
compost heap; working the heap: cost of 
labor in making one; muck in a compost; 
composts profitable. 
The only materials available, generally, on 
New England farms, for making a compost 
are muck, wood-earth, dead leaves, weeds, 
sods, yard-scrapings, house slops, and the 
urine from stock, so far as it is saved. Straw 
of all sorts, except perhaps buckwheat,, is of 
more value to feed than for compost-making. 
These materials can be gathered at any 
time when they are available and the other 
work of the farm will allow. As most of our 
farms are run short-handed, there is far less 
compost made than otherwise there might be. 
The heaps can be made at any time, but if it 
is done late iu the fall the heat generated by 
decomposition may be overcome by the cold 
weather, uuless the heap is a large one and is 
properly protected and otherwise looked after. 
A pile 10 to 15 feet wide, four feet or more 
high, and of any length, will, if under a slight 
shed protection, maintain its heat, and may 
be turned in a mild time, wet down (prefer¬ 
ably with urine), and the heat started again, 
even in quite cold weather. The purpose of 
heating is, of course, to cause decay of coarse 
material, and the turning is necessary in or¬ 
der that the whole may be properly ferment¬ 
ed, as the outside of the heap is but little 
affected. Once iu from four to six weeks is 
often enough to turn in cool weather. The 
use of urine, immediately after turning, to 
satuiate the heap, is a great help towards 
starting the heat anew, as well as enriching 
the compost; but in lack of that, house-slops, 
wash-water, or even plain warm water will 
answer. In making the heap, it should be 
well and evenly mixed of the different mate¬ 
rials. built up square, and trodden so as to 
have, as nearly as posssible, an equal density 
all over; otherwise the foundation will not be 
so even or so complete. The heap should be 
frequently inspected, and if it appears to be 
heating too much in one spot it should be wet, 
or in winter snow may be shoveled upon the 
over-heated spots. This is to prevent fire- 
fang, and to secure uniformity. The best 
time to shovel over is while the heat is at its 
bight, or before it is much abated. After 
two or three turnings, if rightly managed, 
only a mild heat will be started, but if all has 
been done rightly the compost will then be 
nearly ready for use. If the heat, however, 
is lost before this is accomplished, the addi¬ 
tion of 10 or 15 per cent, of strawy horse man 
ure, well mixed with the mass and wet with 
urine, yard water or wash water will start 
a new heat. It requires some practice to 
know just how to manage it. 
As a rule, I should use no more stable man¬ 
ure in a compost heap than I was obliged to, 
in order to get up the required heat. If 
manure is rightly handled, under a proper 
shelter, and no very coarse litter, or no ex¬ 
cess of straw is used in bedding the stock, it 
will all, with proper attention, be in complete 
order for application to the land when spring 
opens. One of the greatest nuisances in 
stable manure is long corn stalks, but no 
sensible farmer, unless very short-handed, 
will allow stalks to go into tip manure in that 
shape. 
In regard to the frequency of working the 
compost heap over, it depends largely upon 
what it is composed of. The object proposed 
is to obtain decay of structure sufficient to 
secure the desired fineness with uniformity of 
composition. After this is attained any fur¬ 
ther fermentation is injurious, and should be 
prevented by turning and exposure to the air, 
or by drenching with cold water or melting 
snow—not to excess, of course, but sufficient 
to stay the heat. 
As to the cost of labor in making comport, 
it depends mainly upon the ease with which 
the materials can be collected. After the 
heap is made, the remaining labor is no more 
than, if as much as, the labor of cleaning out 
the stables and disposing of the dung in a 
proper manner. Where there is a good muck 
bed on the farm, which can be drained so that 
it can be cut down at the side or end, and 
loaded from with tolerable ease and rapidity, 
compost-making can be made profitable. 
Muck dug out of a wet swamp, where one has 
to dig rapidly in order to prevent being 
drowned out of the hole by inflowing water, 
does not pay very well. Such muck has to be 
wheeled out upon the bank to drain and then 
drawn to the yard. If it is of very good 
quality this may pay, at seasons when there 
is nothing else to do. Muck alone will, per¬ 
haps, more often than not, refuse to heat 
alone, even when it has been drained of all 
the water which will run from it; but 
it makes an excellent basis for a com¬ 
post heap. Dry leaves mixed in suffi¬ 
cient quantity with drained muck will 
always start a good heat, if the mix¬ 
ing is thoroughly done. The addition of any 
kind of annual vegetation answers a similar 
purpose, which is greatly aided by saturation 
with liquids loaded with organic matter, like 
urine, house-slops, or wash-water When all 
the necessary material is reasonably handy, 
and there is no other pressing call for labor 
in othei departments, I believe that compost 
making will pay fair day wages for all hands 
engaged in it, and leave a profit to the farmer, 
iu the improvement of his laud, equal to that 
derived from any purchased fertiliziug mate¬ 
rial at ordinary prices. On farms far remov¬ 
ed from villages or cities, compost making, in 
order to increase the supply of manure, is 
about the only possible resource, and it can 
often be done very easily. As an inducement 
to the careful collection and preservation of 
urine and other organically saturated fluids, 
so useful not only in starting a heat in the 
heap, but in greatly adding to its richness, 
compost-making is not to be neglected upon 
farms run for profit—I should have added 
above that unleached ashes, added as liberally 
as they can be afforded to the compost heap, 
are a very strong aid to the solution and de 
composition of coarse vegetable matter,— 
weeds, stalks, etc. 
Orleans Co., Vt. 
MAKING- AND USING A COMPOST 
HEAP. 
Making a compost ; materials ; hauling out\ 
applying. 
I always use compost because experience 
has taught me that manure, previous to fer¬ 
mentation, is often ruinous to vegetables. As 
soon iu the season as any green s^uff that is 
not wanted for other purposes can be gath¬ 
ered, it is carried, with all other suitable re¬ 
fuse matter, to a convenient place, and mixed 
with what stable manure I have, the pile be¬ 
ing increased from time to time as materials 
are found. Into this heap I throw wash water, 
liquid manure and slops of any kind, the ob¬ 
ject being to keep the manure from becoming 
flre-fanged. Green weeds of any kind can be 
used to better advantage than dry straw, 
stalks, etc., because they decay faster and 
with less labor. It has been a mystery to me 
why so many thousands of tons of ragweed 
are allowed to go to waste on the farms, when 
they can so easily be turned to good advan¬ 
tage. In the fall of the year the pile is hauled 
out into the field where it is to be used the 
following spring. There it is thrown into 
heaps and covered with soil. One turning is 
sufficient, but all lumps must be broken up, so 
that it will handle like sawdust. If I have 
not enough compost for the purpose wanted, 
I add commercial fertilizers enough to supply 
the deficiency. As a rule, I use all manures 
not much less than a year old in this way, and 
since I have adopted this plan I have seldom 
failed of a crop. The manure is worked in 
with the harrow or cultivator after plowing 
the ground. I work the heap until fine. I 
think manure worked in this way worth dou¬ 
ble as much as that applied in the usual man¬ 
ner; that is, from the barnyard, and spread 
on the field. For a bed of early beets or on¬ 
ions, however, I prefer to take the compost 
after fermentation has ceased in October, and 
spread it broadcast and plow it under imme¬ 
diately, letting it remain until planting time 
next spring. Then plow again, and the 
ground works up like a new feather bed. 
JAMES PERKINS. 
MORE ABOUT A COMPOST HEAP. 
Materials', formation; ivorking over the 
heap; composting profitably; lessons of 
experience. 
I used last fall 750 loads of compost manure 
and have about 400 yet to use. This has been 
put out with a Kemp manure spreader on my 
meadows at the rate of 15 loads per acre. I 
consider that stable manure, either horse or 
cow, and black muck, about the best for a 
compost heap in this section, although lime 
and muck mixed and allowed to lie for a year 
make a fair fertilizer. 
The best way to make a heap is with oxen 
and a cart, beginning with say one foot of 
muck at the bottom of the heap: then two 
feet of manure; then six inches of muck; then 
manure again, and so on until the heap is 
completed with a foot of muck covering the 
entire pile and the sides too, if possible. I 
make the heap about four rods from my 
barns, and at any time of the year the ma¬ 
nure can be taken from the stable windows 
and doors, and I always try to keep muck 
handy so I can get it at any time. I use all 
my manure this way, except what I put on 
my potato patch, which is always taken di¬ 
rectly from the heaps around the stables. As 
a general thing the heap is never worked 
over until we are ready to use the spreader. 
Then two men at the pile will work over and 
mix up, while the team is putting out the 
load. I do not say it should not be worked 
over; but I do say manure put up this way 
should remain a year in the heap before it is 
used; then it becomes thoroughly rotten and 
will not heat, and it will work over in beauti¬ 
ful order—even horse manure will not heat 
handled in this way. 
In my opinion the composted manure is 
enough better to pay largely for all labor 
used in hauling muck, and handling it over, say 
once, which is enough. It then becomes 
thoroughly rotten and ready to use. I think 
all farmers should have manure ahead, say, one 
year—I mean composted with muck. The 
trouble is they never give it a trial. They 
think it costs too much. Which is the cheap¬ 
er, to do this or buy chemical fertilizer? I will 
admit it is easier to handle the chemical fer¬ 
tilizer, but look ahead at the results of both. 
The results will tell the story. I say compost 
every time, and you will come out ahead. 
This is from experience not so much with 
commercial fertilizers as with manure. 
J. J. MITCHELL. 
I have never had a compost heap on my 
little farm. I once worked for a gardener 
who had one, and his method of using muck, 
stable manure, leaves, dead animals, and 
lime, and throwing over the mass several 
times each season, struck me as far too expen¬ 
sive for my use, although the manure so made 
was free from weed seeds and undoubtedly 
good. Since coming to Colorado, where la¬ 
bor is high-priced, I have spread “short,” but 
crude stable manure on my gardens, when¬ 
ever I can get it, from September to June. 
We plow it well under, and heat, cultivation 
of the soil, and irrigation soon convert the 
crude manure into plant-food, judging by the 
way the plants look up at me. o. Howard. 
TWENTY YEARS’EXPERIENCE WITH 
ASHES AND BONE. 
T. H. HOSKINS M. D. 
Character of the land, enriching 'the first 
crops; heavy manuring; experiments 
with fertilizers ; present condition of the 
farm. 
sandy soil more compact. My soil would 
rank as “ light,” yet it is not what could be 
described as sandy. The farm is part of a 
plain upon the east shore of Lake Memph- 
remagog, spreading out a mile or more from 
the hills, and from 40 to 00 feet above the 
water. As the old beaches along the hillsides 
show, it was once a hundred feet or more 
underwater. It is in fact an alluvial plain, 
and boring strikes uo rock. We find water 
only in a quicksand, which is reached at 
about the level of the lake. It is precisely 
such land as the city of Louisville, Ky., 
stands on, which is a plain extending several 
miles back to hills, in the same way, and 
which was also once under water, before the 
limestone reef wnich makes the Falls of the 
Ohio, was worn down enough to drain it. 
There is a considerable variety in such a de¬ 
posit, some spots being quite sandy, others 
gravelly, and there being occasionally a 
streak of sandy clay, or a little “hardpan,” 
i.e., gravel cemented by oxide of iron. 
Generally it is fine garden land, but 
mine, which originally bore a heavy growth 
of Sugar Maple, had been “potatoed to death” 
in the 20 years it had been cultivated, so that 
it was considered entirely worn out. But I 
had seen just such old fields, in the rear of 
Louisville, brought up by German gardeners 
in a few years to high productiveness. This 
was done by stable manure from the city. I 
could not get much manure, but I could get 
ashes, and the first thing I did was to turn 
over the “bound-out” sod, sow on the furrows 
00 bushels of ashes to the acre, and with an 
ammoniated superphosphate in the hill 
plant nearly all of it to corn. The crop was 
remarkably good, and a small piece of pota¬ 
toes bore also a good crop. I kept a couple of 
cows and a horse, and bought what manure I 
could pick up in a little village of 300 people. 
I bought ground raw bone liberally, and com¬ 
posted it with ashes, wetting the mixture, and 
letting it stand some time before using I may 
say that I never had a poor crop of anything, 
and the fifth year I had an acre of Brezee’s 
Prolific Potatoes that gave me 4(30 bushels. 
On the same piece, where I had dug off an 
early crop of Early Rose, 1 got nearly at the 
rate of 1,000 bushels of flat English turnips per 
acre. I have kept on in this way, growing 
anything 1 could find a market for—nursery 
stock, strawberries and other small fruits, 
seeds, etc., etc., gradually working most of 
the place into an apple orchard. There is no 
question but that the soil has growD more com¬ 
pact with this treatment, approaching more 
nearly to clay in its nature, so that now, 
thoug h not at first, attention must be paid to 
its condition as regards moisture before plow¬ 
ing, otherwise it will be somewhat lumpy. In 
the 20 years I have put on not less (upon 12 
acres) than 3,000 bushels of ashes, 40 tons of 
bone, in various forms, and all the mauure I 
could make or buy, which perhaps would 
amount to an average of 20 cords a year. I 
have also used about half a ton yearly of a 
good commercial fertilizer, at first in the hill, 
but later broadcasted on such crops as I want 
to push early. I have also experimented mod¬ 
erately with sulphate of ainmonnia and S. C. 
“floats,” but never with potash salts, except 
so far as they may have been a constituent of 
purchased fertilizers. The present condition of 
my soil is very good, being capable of growing 
good cabbages anywhere, and all of it except 
where the fruit trees have obtaiued full posses¬ 
sion, is run as a market garden, the neighbor¬ 
ing villages having grown to have largely a 
manufacturing population. I am satisfied 
that this kind of farming can be carried on 
successfully without dung, yet better with it. 
A MANURE EXAMPLE. 
At the Albion P'armers’ Institute Professor 
I. P. Roberts lectured on mauure. In the 
course of his remarks he called upon Mr. J. M. 
Drew, a student at Cornell, to give the follow¬ 
ing example of the profit of selling wheat and 
buying bran: 
Last year there was sold from the Univers¬ 
ity farm $464 worth of wheat (580 bushels at 
80 cents). Bran at $15 per ton was taken in 
exchange. According to Harris on Manures, 
every thousand pounds of bran contain 22.4 
pounds of nitrogen, 14.3 pounds of potash, 
27.3 pounds of phosphoric acid. At $15 per 
ton, $464 would buy 31 tons or 62,000 pounds 
of bran. This amount would contain 22.4x62, 
equal to 1,388 8 pounds of nitrogen; 14.3x62, 
equal to 886.6 pounds of potash; 27.3x62, equa 
to 1,692.6 pounds of phosphoric acid. Esti¬ 
mating nitrogen to be worth 17 cents; potash, 
4.5 cents; and phosphoric acid, seven cents, we 
have, by multiplying: 
Nitrogen worth - - $236,096 
Potash worth ... $39,897 
Phosphoric acid worth - $118 048 
The Rural asks my experience with ashes 
as affecting the mechanical condition of the 
soil, quoting Prof. Storer’s remarks that the 
effect of some potash manures is to make a 
Total value of plant food in bran, $394.046 
It is estimated that cows giving milk will 
use up 20 per cent, of the total plant food and 
give off 80 per cent, in the manure. Beef ani¬ 
mals will use but five per cent, and give off 95 
