1909. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
985 
PREPARING SWAMP FOR GRASS. 
TP- V. H., Ware, Mass. —I have nearly 
25 acres of land, that has been under 
water nearly 20 years. The land is almost 
level, and will make 25 acres of fine grass 
land if it can be tiled, or sand and gravel 
carted on to harden it. What is the best and 
cheapest way? The bed of the brook through 
this land shows sand and clay, and there 
is from one to two feet of muck all over 
its surface. How to get this muck land to 
grass is what I am asking my brother 
farmers to tell me. I have ample sand and 
gravel near and if tile draining is best and 
cheapest, I would like to know it. 
Ans.—I should “ask the land” by try¬ 
ing two or three methods on part of it; 
methods that are simple and inexpen¬ 
sive, and leave tile draining and drawing 
on of other material for a last resort, 
when proved to be necessary. If the 
water table is 18 inches or more below 
the surface, tile draining should not be 
required for grass; and with the use of 
the right chemical fertilizers the grass 
and clover seed should catch and hold, 
and their growth firm the soil; espe¬ 
cially the clover. Basic slag, containing 
lime, would be a good source of phos¬ 
phoric acid for this land.; and where I 
have applied muriate of potash (espe¬ 
cially in the Fall), clover has never 
failed to make a good catch. These 
broadcast, with some nitrate of soda to 
help the start, would give trial of the 
simplest way of getting land into hay 
production. On another part I should 
try the same seeding followed by a 
heavy rolling to firm the soil. If the 
muck must have other material added 
to it, I would try to get it from the 
bottom by extra heavy plowing, which 
would also help to drain the piece. 
Billerica. Mass. e. f. d. 
SOMF PROBLEMS IN DRAINING. 
Part I. 
No other improvement in the manage¬ 
ment of New York soils, promises to 
give as large net returns as thorough 
drainage. Our lands have long ago 
passed their virgin condition of pro¬ 
ductiveness, and now require more close 
study, thorough tillage, and better man¬ 
agement than 50 or 75 years ago. At 
that time the physical condition was very 
different. It was loose and open on ac¬ 
count of the development of plant roots, 
and the presence of humus in a larger 
quantity than now exists. This has been 
lost through ignorant or indifferent 
methods of tillage and the failure to 
supply more to take its place. Through 
the loss of this organic matter the soil 
has become hard, rains have run off the 
surface instead of soaking in, each repe¬ 
tition of which renders it more impervi¬ 
ous and dense, making the soil harder 
to work, and more susceptible to ex¬ 
tremes of we-tness and drought. We as 
farmers try to meet these changed con¬ 
ditions as we find them in three ways, 
usually in the following order: i.e., 
manures or fertilizers, tillage, and drain¬ 
age, and properly this order, in relation 
to importance should be reversed, for 
good tillage can never be practical on 
poorly drained land, and manures are of 
little value without good tillage. This 
is especially true of fine textured soils. 
There are two methods or types of 
drainage, surface or open ditches, and 
blind or underdrains, usually of tile. The 
latter is what we shall consider in this 
connection, as they are by far the more 
practical and satisfactory. The first 
tile drains in America were laid near 
Geneva, in 18.37, by John Johnson, on 
his 300-acre farm of clay loam and 
clay soils. During the course of 30 
years, Mr. Johnson laid between 60 and 
70 miles of tile drains on his farm with 
entirely satisfactory results, and they 
are still in good working condition. His 
yield of wheat increased from 15 and 
20 bushels per acre, to between 30 and 
40. He received recognition of his ser¬ 
vices to the farming community from 
the New York State Agricultural So¬ 
ciety, and the practice seemed to eman¬ 
ate from Geneva as a center, but. since 
these early activities New York has 
fallen sadly behind many other States 
farther west in this type of farm im¬ 
provement. The benefits of tile drainage 
are many, some of the more important 
are, first, drainage removes the excess 
pf water from the soil, thus rendering 
■t firmer. Poorly drained soil is seri¬ 
ously injured by working or tramping 
when wet. Drainage changes a bad phy¬ 
sical condition into a desirable one, es¬ 
pecially in fine textured soils. This 
change is produced by the alternate wet- 
hug and drying, to which well drained 
soil is subject. It is a well known fact 
that the tilth of a soil rapidly improves 
by draining. Contrary to a frequent 
belief, drainage increases the amount of 
moisture available for crops. This is 
accomplished in tw r o ways; first, a well 
granulated soil or one in good tilth has 
a greater capillary capacity, retaining 
more moisture against a dry spell; sec¬ 
ond, the deeper soil or lower water table 
gives the roots a wider range of dis¬ 
tribution, and consequently a larger field 
of operations in search of moisture. 
Drainage promotes the aeration of the 
A PUMPKIN PALACE. Fig. 539. 
soil; that is, the exchange between soil 
air and external air. Oxygen is neces¬ 
sary to the living organisms in the soil. 
This is excluded in a saturated soil. 
Where water goes out, air must come 
in. This acts on the minerals in the 
soil, creating plant food, and also aids 
the growth of desirable bacteria, and 
destroys the growth of injurious bac¬ 
teria, which latter will grow only in a 
damp, sour, soggy land. Drainage per¬ 
mits the soil to maintain a higher aver¬ 
age temperature than is possible on a 
wet soil. Experiments show that at 
a depth of seven inches, drained soil is 
15 degrees warmer than undrained. Mr. 
Johnson wrote in 1853: “Undrained 
fields must generally be left late in the 
Spring—perhaps too late to work 
profitably—and in the Autumn the frost 
will inflict an injury.” Thus tile drain¬ 
age lengthens the growing season at 
both ends by permitting us to work the 
land, then seed or plant it several days 
or weeks earlier, and keeping up the 
temperature in the Fall; in many in¬ 
stances this difference would result in 
success or failure. The roots of most 
farm crops will not grow in a saturated 
soil, so thej'- are confined to a thin layer 
of comparatively dry surface soil or die 
altogether. Drainage greatly reduces 
the injury to Winter crops resulting 
from ‘ heaving.” How many of us have 
felt quite discouraged over the prospects 
of our clover hay crop, especially by 
this heaving of the soil, during the al¬ 
ternate freezing and thawing. Many 
times a large proportion of the clover 
roots lie practically all on the surface 
when this heaving process is over. Our 
wheat crops and Timothy also suffer 
in the same way, cutting down our aver¬ 
age yield in a startling manner, and 
causing the balance of profit and loss 
to swing the wrong way in many in¬ 
stances. IRVING C. H. COOK. 
(To be continued.) 
A Pumpkin Palace. —The picture at 
Fig. 539 shows an exhibit at the Hills¬ 
boro, Ohio. State fair. It was a “pal¬ 
ace” covered with pumpkins. Refresh¬ 
ments were served inside of it. The 
pumnkins were arranged in colors and 
shapes so as to make a very attractive 
display. At Independence, Mo., a sim¬ 
ilar “palace” was erected, and on the 
last day a band of famous colored cooks 
took possession and turned the pump¬ 
kins into pies—thousands of which were 
given away. We imagine that these 
cooks impressed the value of the pump¬ 
kin crop upon the people deeper than 
any scientific agriculturist could have j 
done. 
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