118 
IShts RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 27, 1917. 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Making a Soil. —Here is a question 
which gets down .somewhere near the 
origin of things: 
Although not a farmer, I have five 
acres of land outside of the town limits. 
Two acres lay low and were full of Win¬ 
ter sjjrings. I have rented this land to 
town council for dump. At present I 
have about one and one-half acres 
leveled off. It consists of from two to 
six feet of garbage, tin cans, etc., covered 
with eighteen inches of hard-coal ashes. 
Mv intentions are to plant Winter apple 
trees, forty feet each way, with peach 
trees between, space between tree rows 
to be planted to raspberries, blackberries 
and maybe some sweet corn. \Vill tins 
work oiit? Should I u-se fertilizer? If 
so, what kind? If not practical, what 
would you do with it? w. F. b. 
This thing of making orchard and 
garden soil out of town refuse will seem 
logical enough to those who have never 
tried it. We are often told of the great 
fertilizing value of city wastes. Here 
they are all dumped and mixed together 
why not then a soil? What is soil, any¬ 
way, if this will not make one? 
Done Befoke. —On many of the va¬ 
cant lots in New York and other large 
cities this thing has been done. You will 
find in Summer great crops of potatoes 
and garden vegetables growing on these 
dump heaps, and these crops grow better 
year after year as cultivation goes on. 
\After a year or two of settling and work¬ 
ing, I have no doubt these dump heaps 
would analyze quite a little higher than 
good ordinary soil. In the greenhouse, 
too, it is not uncommon to take sifted coal 
ashes, mixed with a little sand or soil, 
and grow good crops of indoor vegetables 
and flowers. In such cases the ashes and 
sand are not regarded as “soil” so much 
as a good place for the plants to put out 
their roots and take their food and drink. 
At the beginning of the dump heap much 
the same thing will prove true. The gar¬ 
deners who start on these heaps are 
obliged to use manure or street sweep¬ 
ings freely at first. This puts plant food 
and organic matter into the upper layer 
and thus we have the beginning of soil. 
Making Soil. —We must understand 
that what we call “soil” has bi'cn a long 
time in the making. That field of which 
you are so proud was originally Nature s 
dump heap or backyard. The original 
was belched up out of some volcano, set¬ 
tled out of the sea or brought in by ice 
or water from some distant place and 
dropped. Had you tried to farm this 
original “soil” you would have had a much 
harder task than our friend with his 
dump heap, for he can take advantage 
of all that has been learned about the 
matter. It took thousands of years to 
stuff your soil with organic mattei and 
life, and make its plant food available, so 
that you can drain and plow and plant 
it safely. On the city dump heap is a 
different problem'. Below the surface are 
tin cans, old bones, paper, gai’bage, street 
sweepings, glas,s, and crockery and all 
sorts of trash packed in together. The 
glass and tin and similar junk will give 
drainage much like the stones in a nat¬ 
ural soil. The garbage and paper, old 
bones, etc., will slowly decay and form 
organic mattei’. In fact, after some yeais, 
I think, this mixture will be better than 
the subsoil of ordinary land. 
■ The Upper Crust. —That is where the 
work must be done and where the real 
test will come. Our friend has about 
eighteen inches of coal ashes for “soil 
in which to plant his trees and garden 
crops. Now, there is practically no plant 
food worth mentioning in Tie coal ashes. 
They will make a good f-^ vh toii for the 
soil, but unless some good body of or¬ 
ganic matter can be packed in it will 
be nothing but a skeleton in the closet 
to ihe crops. One of the first needs of 
such a situation is lime; next is organic 
matter, and next available plant food. 
You have got to regard that dump heap 
about as the greenhouse man does his 
bed of coal ashes—just a place to nold 
the roots of your plants, where you can 
feed and water them. I should, if it were 
possible, give that dump heap a good 
coat of manure and plow it under. Then 
add about 1,500 pounds of lime to the 
acre and harrow it well in. I .should 
plant the apple and peach trees and 
broadcast 400 pounds to the acre of acid 
Xjhosphate. I should not try to plant 
the small fruits until I had that dump 
heap more in the nature of soil by add¬ 
ing organic matter, and I would make 
the dump heap provide its own humus. 
The best crops I have found for start¬ 
ing such work are turnips and buck¬ 
wheat. Early in the season, after plant¬ 
ing the trees, I would broadcast a mix¬ 
ture of turnip and radish seed. There 
will be a fair growth, and I would plow 
it under in .Tune, and seed to buckwheat. 
During the .Summer I would hand hoe 
around the trees—circles four to five feet 
wide—and when the turnips went under 
I would pull a quantity by hand and 
spade them in around the trees. In 
September plow the buckwheat under and 
sow rye and Alsike clover. In the Spring 
you will be surprised to see the change 
in color and texture of that upper crust. 
It will no longer be plain coal a.shes, but 
well along on the road to “soil,” and 
the following siiring you can, if you like, 
put under the rye and clover, use more 
phosphate acid, and begin to plant your 
small fruits. 
Will It I*ay.^ —It is doubtful if all this 
will pay, unless land is high and you 
have no other place for your orchard 
and garden. It will be a question of 
value. Many a dumping ground or eye¬ 
sore can be handled in this way and 
made into good lawns or gardens, but it 
will cost time and money. I know of- 
some beautiful places which look as if 
they were worked out on strong, natural 
.soil. Dig down into them and you come 
upon tin cans, glass, and the trash ivhich 
betrays the dump heap. It may be some¬ 
thing like digging into the “past” of some 
of the characters who come into a new 
country and make good citizens. If they 
do make good, it is better to let their 
sleeping dogs lie. There is no question 
about the possibility of restoring the dump 
heap to good farm society if anyone will 
put time and the capital into it. It will 
be slow work unless you can start with 
manure or unless you can mix sand, or 
rather coarse dirt, in with the coal ashes 
to make a soil. 
Cover Cropping. —We never had so 
many questions about restoring or build¬ 
ing up poor or vacant fields. There 
seems to be a sudden rush to take up a 
lot of neglected land and put it at work. 
Many of these people say they do not 
want to spend much money in doing this, 
but they just want to use lime and seed 
and let the .soil make itself over. I fear 
they will not get along very fast with 
such a programme. The lime will help 
and fair crops may be grown for plow¬ 
ing under, but here is a case where money 
invested in chemicals will pay good in¬ 
terest. All of our Eastern neglected land 
is lacking in phosphorus and will make 
but a .slow comeback unless that is used 
in available form. A small quantity of 
available nitrogen will usually prove 
profitable, and, aside from its plant food 
value, stable manure is needed in these 
old soils to introduce bacteria and thus 
helji to work up the organic matter. I 
am sure that our friend can make “soil” 
out of his dump heap, and any other neg¬ 
lected field can be improved, but it will 
cost money to do it, and in some cases 
of dry, leachy soils it is doubtful if the 
work will pay. Some of these men who 
make it aiipear so easy to work soil so 
it will “come back” through its own efforts 
will make trouble and loss for the unin¬ 
formed. II. w. c. 
In their morning w’alk .lessie and her 
mother passed the home of a lady who 
was so ill that a large quantity of straw 
had been strewn over the street to dead¬ 
en the noise. The straw aroused Jessie’s 
curiosity, and she asked many questions 
about it. “It has been put there,” her 
mother explained, “becau.se last week 
they brouglit a little girl baby to- the 
lady w’ho lives there.” .Jessie cast one 
last contem))lative look at the straw. 
“Well, all I’ve got to say is that they 
brought her widl packed,” she remarked. 
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