Vol. LIX. No. 2687. , NEW YORK, AUGUST 11, 1900. 
FIVE TONS OF GRASS PER ACRE. 
THE CLARK PLAN REVIEWED. 
Perfect Preparation, Heavy Seeding, Full Feeding. 
What time of the year does Mr. Clark apply his mix¬ 
ture of bone, potash and soda? What amount of fine- 
ground bone, muriate of potash and nitrate of soda per 
acre does he use? Docs he broadcast it, or put it on with 
a drill? Are his meadows all Timothy or are they a mix¬ 
ture of different grasses? We cut as heavy a piece of 
grass this season as we ever saw, but it comes short of 
five tons; there was nothing on it but Timothy, and there 
was not much room for any more unless it had grown 
taller. j. T . R 
THE SOIL.—We have told the story of Mr. Clark’s 
grass crop so many times that it seems as though all 
our readers ought to 
know the details. Doz¬ 
ens of questions are 
now being received, 
however, and so we 
try to give a con¬ 
densed synopsis of 
what has been said in 
former years. The 
field on which the 
grass is grown is a 
typical New England 
hillside and meadow. 
The lower part is in¬ 
clined to be moist; the 
upper part is an or¬ 
dinary hillside. Orig¬ 
inally this field was 
thickly covered with 
stones, the upper part 
being an old huckle¬ 
berry pasture. The 
stones were dug out, 
and carried away or 
buried in the ground. 
The damper part of 
the field was drained, 
the stones being 
buried in the deep 
ditches to within 
about a foot of the 
surface. The field is 
not what we would 
call natural grass land 
by any means. The 
stones were pulled out 
or buried, and the sur- 
f a c e was carefully 
graded. Mr. Clark lays 
great stress upon the 
fact that grass land 
must be smooth, with 
no depressions or gul¬ 
lies in which the 
water can stand. 
FITTING THE 
SOIL. — Having 
smoothed the land, 
Mr. Clark proceeds 
about as follows: The 
first thing is to kill out the old sod. The 
ordinary way to do this would be to plow this sod 
over flat, and then thoroughly pulverize and work 
up the upper soil. Instead of plowing this sod 
down out of sight, Mr. Clark wants to toss the 
grass roots up to the sun and air, where they will be 
killed. To plow the sod under, he thinks, is only tb 
give it a rest, so that after the newer seed is put into 
the ground, the foul grass and weeds will grow with 
fresh vigor and make their way into the new crop. 
Instead of plowing ne uses the Cutaway harrow. 
This tool was invented by Mr. Clark, who learned its 
need in attempting to subdue old sod. This Cutaway, 
as most readers know, is a tool like the old disk 
harrow, with sawlike teeth cut out in the edge 
These teeth chop and dig and turn up the grass, not 
covering it over, but loosening it and throwing it up 
to the sun. Many farmers would be satisfied with 
two workings of this Cutaway. But this does not 
satisfy Mr. Clark. He keeps the Cutaway at work, 
chopping and digging first in one direction and then 
in another, until the soil has been worked over at 
least 25 times. The object of this is to make the 
soil so loose and mellow that the tiny seeds of grass 
will surely sprout and grow. After this thorougn 
working the grass and weeds which occupy the land 
are pretty thoroughly killed out. There are, of 
course, old seeds lett in the soil, but the heavy seed¬ 
ing of grass seed will usually make such a thick mat 
that these old seeds have little chance to thrive. Mr. 
Clark gives as another reason for all this work in 
preparing tne soil that almost every other farm crop 
except grass can be cultivated during its growth. The 
only way to cultivate the grass crop is thoroughly to 
work the ground before the seed is put in. If we 
raise five crops of corn and work the soil five times 
for each crop, we give it the same working for the 
five years that Mr. Clark gives fiis grass land before 
seeding it down to produce his heavy crop. 
HEAVY SEEDING.—Having given this perfect fit¬ 
ting of the ground, the next point of Mr. Clark’s sys¬ 
tem is to seed heavily to grass alone. The old idea 
was that grass, being a tender plant, required a nurse 
crop, such as rye or wheat. When grain and grass 
are sown together a year is lost in getting a crop of 
hay, while the yield is cut down at least one-half of 
what it might have been if the grass had been seeded 
alone. Just consider this for a moment. Mr. Clark 
sent us the grass cut from one square foot of ground. 
There were 341 separate plants. This means 14,853,900 
plants on an acre. Take a field seeded with grain, 
and after the grain has been cut you will find where 
every grain plant 
stood a bare spot a3 
large as your hand, or 
larger. Everyone of 
these spots ought to 
contain 25 or more 
grass plants, if you 
are to have the aver¬ 
age found in Mr. 
Clark’s field. The re¬ 
sult of grain seeding 
is that from 25 to 30 
per cent of tfce field is 
left bare after the 
grain is cut. You can¬ 
not reseed these bare 
spots, but your mea¬ 
dow must go through 
its life lacking the 
working power of a 
large share of its sur¬ 
face. It is safe to say 
that four or five tons 
of grass never can be 
produced after seeding 
with grain. Such a 
yield is only possible 
when every square 
inch of the surface of 
the meadow has its 
stand of grass. In or¬ 
der to obtain this 
thick seeding, Mr. 
Clark uses 14 quarts 
each of Red-top and 
Timothy and four 
quarts of Red clover 
per acre. This, of 
course, is a much 
heavier seeding than 
that used by the aver¬ 
age farmer, but the 
yield resulting from it 
is also heavier. This 
seeding is done in 
what many farmers 
would call a slow and 
tedious way. Only one 
kind of seed is sown 
at a time, and in or¬ 
der to obtain a greater accuracy, Mr. Clark sows the 
field twice over to each kind of seed. He uses two 
lines, which are pulled across the field, so that nar¬ 
row strips of accurate size are seeded one at a time. 
For example, seven quarts of Timothy seed are di¬ 
vided accurately into 60 parts. The lines are drawn 
across the field divided into spaces of two square 
rods. One part of the Timothy seed will be scattered 
evenly over each space, the fertilizer being applied 
in the same way, and also the Red-top seed. When 
the field has been once gone over in this way, the 
lines are changed so as to run the opposite way of 
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