General Remarks On Manuring With Green Crops
from Gthe $100 Prize Essay On The Cultivation Of The Potato; And How To Cook The Potato
Experience proves that no better method can be adopted to bring up lands
partially exhausted, which are remote from cities, than plowing under
green crops. By this plan the farmer can take lot after lot, and soon
bring all up to a high state of fertility. True, he gathers no crop for
one year, but the outlay is little; and if in the second year he gathers
as much from one acre as he formerly did from three, he is still
largely the gainer.
It costs no more to cultivate an acre of rich, productive land than an
acre of poor, unproductive land; and the pleasure and profit of
harvesting a crop that abundantly rewards the husbandman for his care
and labor are so overwhelmingly in favor of rich land as to need no
comment. Besides, manuring with green crops is not transitory in its
effects; the land remembers the generous treatment for many years, and
if at times lime or ashes be added to assist decomposition, will
continue to yield remunerative crops long after land but once treated
with stable manure or guano fails to produce any thing but weeds. The
skinning process, the taking off of every thing grown on the soil and
returning nothing to it, is ruinous alike to farm and farmer. Thousands
of acres can be found in various parts of the country too poor to pay
for cultivating without manuring. Of the capabilities of their lands
under proper treatment the owners thereof have no idea whatever. Such
men say they can not make enough manure on the farm and are too poor to
buy. Why not, then, commence plowing under green crops, the only manure
within easy reach? If fifty acres can not be turned under the first
year, put at least one acre under, which will help feed the rest. Why be
contented with thirty bushels of corn per acre, when eighty or one
hundred may be had? Why raise eight or twelve bushels of wheat per acre,
when forty may as well be had? Why cut but one half-ton of hay per acre,
when the laws of nature allow at least three? Why spend precious time
digging only one hundred bushels of potatoes per acre, when with proper
care and culture three or four hundred may easily be obtained? And,
finally, why toil and sweat, and have the poor dumb beasts toil and
sweat, cultivating thirty acres for the amount of produce that should
grow, may grow, can grow, and has grown on ten acres?
The poorest, most forsaken side-hills, cobble-hills, and knolls, if the
sand or gravel be of moderate depth, underlaid by a subsoil rather
retentive, by turning under green crops grow potatoes of the first
quality. If land be so poor that clover will not take, as is sometimes
the case, seed to clover with millet very early in the spring, and
harrow in with the millet thirty bushels of wood-ashes, or two hundred
pounds of guano per acre; then sow the clover-seed one peck per acre;
brush it in.
If neither ashes nor guano can be obtained at a reasonable price, sow
two hundred pounds of gypsum per acre as soon as the bushing is
completed. This will not fail in giving the clover a fair foothold on
the soil.
Before the millet blossoms, cut and cure it for hay. Keep all stock off
the clover, plaster it the following spring, plow it under when in full
bloom; sow buckwheat immediately; when up, sow plaster; when in full
bloom, plow under and sow the ground immediately with rye, to be plowed
under the next May. Thus three crops are put under within a year, the
ground is left strong, light, porous, free from weeds, ready to grow a
large crop of potatoes, or almost any thing else.
Much is gained every way by having and keeping land in a high state of
fertility. Some crops require so long a season for growth, that high
condition of soil is absolutely necessary to carry them through to
maturity in time to escape autumnal frosts. In the Western States manure
has hitherto been considered of but little value. The soil of these
States was originally very rich in humus. For a time wheat was produced
at the rate of forty bushels per acre; but according to the statistics
given by the Agricultural Department at Washington, for the year 1866,
the average yield in some of these States was but four and a half
bushels per acre. It is evident from this that Mr. Skinflint has had
things pretty much his own way. His land now produces four and a half
bushels per acre; what time shall elapse when it shall be four and one
half acres per bushel? Who dare predict that manure will not at some day
be of value west of the Alleghanies? New-Jersey, with a soil naturally
inferior to that of Illinois, contains extensive tracts that yearly
yield over one hundred bushels of Indian corn per acre, while the
average of the State is over forty-three; and the average yield of the
same cereal in Illinois is but little over thirty-one bushels per acre.
In the Western States, where potatoes are grown extensively for Southern
markets, the average yield is about eighty bushels per acre; while in
old Pennsylvania could be shown the last year potatoes yielding at the
rate of six hundred and forty bushels per acre. There are those who
argue that manure is never necessary--that plant-food is supplied in
abundance by the atmosphere; it was also once said a certain man had
taught his horse to live without eating; but it so happened that just as
he got the animal perfectly schooled, it died.
Good, thorough cultivation and aeration of the soil undoubtedly do much
toward the production of crops; but mere manipulation is not all that is
needed.
That growing plants draw much nourishment from the atmosphere, and
appropriate largely of its constituents in building up their tissue, is
certainly true; it is also certainly true that they require something of
the soil besides mere anchorage. All facts go to show that if the
constituents needed by the plant from the soil are not present in the
soil, the efforts of the plant toward proper development are abortive?
What sane farmer expects to move a heavy load over a rugged road with a
team so lean and poverty-stricken that they cast but a faint shadow? Yet
is he much nearer sanity when he expects farming to be pleasant and
profitable, and things to _move aright_, unless his land is strong and
fat? Is he perfectly sane when he thinks he can skin his farm year after
year, and not finally come to the bone? The farmer on exhausted land
must of necessity use manure. Manure of _some_ kind must go under, or he
must go under; and to the great mass of cultivators no mode of enriching
is so feasible, so cheap, and attended with such satisfactory results,
as that of plowing under green crops.
The old plan of leaving an exhausted farm, and going West in search of
rich "government land," must soon be abandoned. Already the head of the
column of land-hunters have "fetched up" against the Pacific, and it is
doubtful whether their anxious gaze will discover any desirable
unoccupied soil over its waters.
The writer would not be understood as saying that all farms are
exhausted, or that there is _no_ way of recuperation but by plowing
under green crops. What he wishes understood is, that where poor, sandy,
or gravelly lands are found, which bring but small returns to the owner,
by subjecting them to the process indicated, such lands bring good crops
of the kind under consideration. And further, that land in the proper
condition to yield a maximum crop of potatoes, is fitted to grow other
crops equally well. Neither would the writer be understood as arguing
that a crop of clover and one of buckwheat should be turned under for
each crop of potatoes; where land is already in high condition, it may
not be necessary. A second growth of clover plowed under in the fall for
planting early kinds, and a clean clover sod turned in _flat_ furrows in
the spring, for the late market varieties, answer very well. To turn
flat furrows, take the furrow-slice wide enough to have it fall
completely inside the preceding one.
Potatoes should not be planted year after year on the same ground;
trouble with weeds and rapid deterioration of quality and quantity of
tubers soon render the crop unprofitable. Loamy soil planted
continuously soon becomes compact, heavy, and lifeless. Where of
necessity potatoes must be grown yearly on the same soil, it is
advisable to dig rather early, and bury the vines of each hill in the
one last dug; then harrow level, and sow rye to be plowed under next
planting time.
The intelligent farmer, who grows large crops for market, will always so
arrange as to have a clover-sod on dry land in high condition each year
for potatoes. It is said by many, in regard to swine, that "the breed is
in the trough;" though this is certainly untrue to a certain extent, yet
it is undeniable that in potato-growing success or failure is in the
character of soil chosen for their production.
Why clover, or clover and buckwheat lands, are so strongly urged is,
such lands have in them just what the tubers need for their best and
healthiest development; the soil is rendered so rich, light, and porous,
and so free from weeds, that the cultivation of such land is rather a
pleasure than otherwise, and at the close of the season the tangible
profits in dollars and cents are highly gratifying.
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