I can, if it were necessary, give you the name of a ve¬ 
ry scientific farmer, in my neighborhood, who last spring 
bought about a ton o?'Mapes r phosphate, and? applied it 
to various crops of vegetables which he was raising for 
his family use, and he has assured us he could not see 
the slightest degree of increase during their growth or 
at the time of harvesting them ; but from every load of 
good horse manure drawn from the village and proper¬ 
ly applied, the good results and increase of crop were 
very apparent. I do. not doubt the good effects of 
phosphate, when properly made and applied, under cer¬ 
tain circumstances and conditions of soil and crop; but 
from my own experience and that, of others, I do doubt 
the profit and expediency of its indiscriminate use un¬ 
der all circumstances, as is recommended by those in¬ 
terested in its manufacture and sale. And further, I 
know it is not pleasing to the subscribers of an agricul¬ 
tural paper, to have a large portion of its columns 
taken up with affidavits of the workmen engaged in 
manufacturing a manure in which its editor is more 
interested than in the real success of the paper. Yours 
truly, F. C. L. Rahway, N. J., Feb. 18, 1854. 
How to procure Guano for a Wheat Crop. 
How to procure guano for a wheat crop? Why, send 
the money to Longett & Griflfing, of New-York, and 
you will receive guano in return if you so order it, the 
captious joker will say. Even so. But how obtain the 
money for that purpose, without trenching upon any 
extraneous source? “Why,” says the joker, “the ex¬ 
tra product of wheat will pay for the guano.” Possi¬ 
bly it may, and more gain if it do. How to procure 
guano for a wheat crop? I will tell thee, gentle reader. 
Instead of sun drying your land all summer in the 
fallow system, plow it crosswise in the first week of 
June and drag it without lapping, and sow, broadcast, 
from three to four bushels of Indian corn—and sweet 
garden corn if you can obtain the seed—and then 
cover it up with a gang plow or large cultivator. 
Take no further care till the last week of August, 
when jmu must mow down the corn fodder, tie it up in 
bundles and remove it to an adjoining field, for the pur¬ 
pose of clearing the ground for plowing, and set the 
bundles up in shocks, and as soon as cured, put it into 
large cocks, say a load to a cock, and let it take a 
sweat. In a dry spell of weather open the cocks in 
the' morning and cart to the barn in the afternoon, and 
stack it in the mow same as hay, and salt every two 
layers of bundles at the rate of a barrel of salt to five 
acres of fodder. Or if you like it better, stack it to 
the weather, in long, narrow stacks, in joints about tea 
feet long, and thatch it with straw, English fashion. 
The fodder from one acre, when cured, will weigh 
from four to seven tons. Mr. Alpheus Morse, of 
Eaton, told me at our county fair, that ho had weighed 
half an acre of dry corn fodder, and its weight was 
three and a half tons, or seven tons to the acre. His 
farm, it must be borne in mind, is in a very high state 
of cultivation. This corn fodder is worth $10 per ton 
when hay is worth $7. Four tons at $10 per ton = 
$40 per acre. Seed, $3 ;• mowing and binding, $2 
carting, $1,50 =- $6,50. $33,50 profit on the acre to 
buy guano with! The land is left perfectly clean and 
mellow, and there is no loss in the consumption of the 
fodder, for the cattle do not leave a sign of it in the 
manger. 
For soiling milch cows in the dry months of August 
and September, corn fodder is a complete stop-gap to 
the cows drying up, an object aimed at by all practi¬ 
cal men. Half an acre is amply sufficient for ten 
milch cows. Try it, brother farmers, -and see how 
much money you have lost in your lifetime. 
If these calculations be correct, what an immense 
amount of fodder is lost every year in New-York state 
alone \ for it is well known that all soils suitable for 
wheat will grow corn fodder to perfection. 
Who will profit from the fact, that one acre of com 
fodder will buy two hundred weight of guano to the 
acre for six acres of land ? Corn fodder will revolu¬ 
tionize farming in the northern states. John K. Chap¬ 
man. Orchard Cottage, Oneida Lake, Madison co., 
N. Y. —^— 
Culture of the Potato. 
A friend sends us the following, as what he believes 
the best means yet known for avoiding the potato dis¬ 
ease :— 
1. Be content with a medium crop, say 10J to 150 
bushels to the acre, selecting land but moderately rich, 
and using no stimulating manure. The land should 
be a lightish loam, easily permeable by water; and it 
would be well if it had been treated with no stimulant, 
nitrogenous manure the preceding year. 
2. Let the land be brought into fine tilth by means 
of the plow and harrow, to a depth of five or six inch¬ 
es, as early as may be in the spring. Furrow both 
ways, at a distance of three feet, letting the plow in¬ 
cline to the mould-board side, so as to give a broad, 
shallow furrow, of about three inches deep. 
3. As manure for one acre, take 50 bushels of char¬ 
coal dust, or if this is not at hand, 50 bushels of dry, 
well cured peat, or if neither of these is conveniently 
to be had, 50 bushels of turf, piled up the summer pre¬ 
vious and rotted down to a fine powder with a little 
lime; add 10 bushels of unleached ashes; 5 bushels 
of oyster shell lime, or common slaked lime, or leach¬ 
ed ashes, whichever can be obtained with the least 
trouble; 2 bushels of plaster; 1 bushel of bone-dust; 
and 1 bushel of common salt; mix the whole thorough¬ 
ly together, and throw it into the crossings, a little less 
than a pint in each, in that careless sort of way, which 
will cause it to spread itself over at least a square foot. 
4. For seed, select sound potatoes, of medium size 
or a little less, and plant one in a hill, and never more 
than one, if it bo ever so small, without cutting. Plant 
as early as can be done with- safety to the crop from 
spring frosts. Should the weather be wet after plant¬ 
ing, shallow covering would be the best. If it should 
be dry, deep covering would be more favorable. It 
would be perhaps the safest, over such manure as I 
have prescribed, to cover the seed nearly throe inches 
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