Talks on Manures Part 4

5 " mustard, equal 10 tons hay 10 "

5 " rape, equal 10 tons hay 10 "

5 " mangels, 25 tons per acre, 15 "

equal to 3 tons dry Leaves from do. 3 "

------- Total retained on the farm 252 tons.

It would take a good many years to exhaust any ordinary soil by such a course of cropping. Except, perhaps, the sandy knolls, I think there is not an acre on my farm that would be exhausted in ten thousand years, and as some portions of the low alluvial soil will grow crops without manure, there will be an opportunity to give the poor, sandy knolls more than their share of plant-food. In this way, notwithstanding the fact that we sell produce and bring nothing back, I believe the whole farm will gradually increase in productiveness. The plant-food annually rendered available from the decomposition and disintegration of the inert organic and mineral matter in the soil, will be more than equal to that exported from the farm. If the soil becomes deficient in anything, it is likely that it will be in phosphates, and a little superphosphate or bone-dust might at any rate be profitably used on the rape, mustard, and turnips.

The point in good farming is to develop from the latent stores in the soil, and to acc.u.mulate enough available plant-food for the production of the largest possible yield of those crops which we sell. In other words, we want enough available plant-food in the soil to grow 40 bushels of wheat and 50 bushels of barley. I think the farmer who raises 10 tons for every ton he sells, will soon reach this point, and when once reached, it is a comparatively easy matter to maintain this degree of fertility.

WHY OUR CROPS ARE SO POOR.

"If the soil is so rich in plant-food," said the Deacon, "I again ask, why are our crops so poor?"

The Deacon said this very quietly. He did not seem to know that he had asked one of the most important questions in the whole range of agricultural science. It is a fact that a soil may contain enough plant-food to produce a thousand large crops, and yet the crops we obtain from it may be so poor as hardly to pay the cost of cultivation.

The plant-food is there, but the plants cannot get at it. It is not in an available condition; it is not soluble. A case is quoted by Prof.

Johnson, where a soil was a.n.a.lyzed, and found to contain to the depth of one foot 4,652 lbs. of nitrogen per acre, but only 63 lbs. of this was in an available condition. And this is equally true of phosphoric acid, potash, and other elements of plant-food. No matter how much plant-food there may be in the soil, the only portion that is of any immediate value is the small amount that is annually available for the growth of crops.

HOW TO GET LARGER CROPS.

"I am tired of so much talk about plant-food," said the Deacon; "what we want to know is how to make our land produce larger crops of wheat, corn, oats, barley, potatoes, clover, and gra.s.s."

This is precisely what I am trying to show. On my own farm, the three leading objects are (1) to get the land drained, (2) to make it clean and mellow, and (3) to get available nitrogen for the cereal crops.

After the first two objects are accomplished, the measure of productiveness will be determined by the amount of available nitrogen in the soil. How to get available nitrogen, therefore, is my chief and ultimate object in all the operations on the farm, and it is here that science can help me. I know how to get nitrogen, but I want to get it in the cheapest way, and then to be sure that I do not waste it.

There is one fact fully established by repeated experiment and general experience--that 80 lbs. of available nitrogen per acre, applied in manure, will almost invariably give us a greatly increased yield of grain crops. I should expect, on my farm, that on land which, without manure, would give me 15 bushels of wheat per acre, such a dressing of manure would give me, in a favorable season, 35 or 40 bushels per acre, with a proportional increase of straw; and, in addition to this, there would be considerable nitrogen left for the following crop of clover. Is it not worth while making an earnest effort to get this 80 lbs. of available nitrogen?

I have on my farm many acres of low, mucky land, bordering on the creek, that probably contain several thousand pounds of nitrogen per acre. So long as the land is surcharged with water, this nitrogen, and other plant-food, lies dormant. But drain it, and let in the air, and the oxygen decomposes the organic matter, and ammonia and nitric acid are produced. In other words, we get _available_ nitrogen and other plant-food, and the land becomes capable of producing large crops of corn and gra.s.s; and the crops obtained from this low, rich land, will make manure for the poorer, upland portions of the farm.

CHAPTER V.

SWAMP-MUCK OR PEAT AS MANURE.

"It would pay you," said the Deacon, "to draw out 200 or 300 loads of muck from the swamp every year, and compost it with your manure."

This may or may not be the case. It depends on the composition of the muck, and how much labor it takes to handle it.

"What you should do," said the Doctor, "is to commence at the creek, and straighten it. Take a gang of men, and be with them with yourself, or get a good foreman to direct operations. Commence at _a_, and straighten the creek to _b_, and from _b_ to _c_ (see map on next page). Throw all the rich, black muck in a heap by itself, separate from the sand. You, or your foreman, must be there, or you will not get this done. A good ditcher will throw out a great ma.s.s of this loose muck and sand in a day; and you want him to dig, not think. You must do the thinking, and tell him which is muck, and which is only sand and dirt. When thrown up, this muck, in our dry, hot climate, will, in the course of a few months, part with a large amount of water, and it can then be drawn to the barns and stables, and used for bedding, or for composting with manure. Or if you do not want to draw it to the barn, get some refuse lime from the lime-kiln, and mix it with the muck after it has been thrown up a few weeks, and is partially dry. Turn over the heap, and put a few bushels of lime to every cord of the muck, mixing the lime and muck together, leaving the heap in a compact form, and in good shape, to shed the rain.

"When you have straightened, and cleaned out, and deepened the creek,"

continued the Doctor, "commence at _z_ on the new creek, and cut a ditch through the swamp to _y_. Throw the muck on one side, and the sand on the other. This will give you some good, rich muck, and at the same time drain your swamp. Then cut some _under-drains_ from _y_ towards the higher land at _w_, _v_, and _h_, and from _f_ to _x_. These will drain your land, and set free the inert plant-food, and such crops of timothy as you will get from this swamp will astonish the natives, and your bill for medical attendance and quinine will sink to zero."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Creek.]

The Doctor is right. There is money and health in the plan.

Prof. S. W. Johnson, as chemist to the Conn. State Ag. Society, made accurate a.n.a.lyses of 33 samples of peat and muck sent him by gentlemen from different parts of the State. The amount of potential ammonia in the chemically dry peat was found to vary from 0.58 in the poorest, to 4.06 per cent in the richest samples. In other words, one deposit of muck may contain seven times as much nitrogen as another, and it would be well before spending much money in drawing out muck for manure to send a sample of it to some good chemist. A bed of swamp-muck, easily accessible, and containing 3 per cent of nitrogen, would be a mine of wealth to any farmer. One ton of such muck, dry, would contain more nitrogen than 7 tons of straw.

"It would be capital stuff," said the Deacon, "to put in your pig-pens to absorb the urine. It would make rich manure."

"That is so," said I, "and the weak point in my pig-breeding is the want of sufficient straw. Pigs use up more bedding than any other animals.

I have over 200 pigs, and I could use a ton of dry muck to each pig every winter to great advantage. The pens would be drier, the pigs healthier, and the manure richer."

The Doctor here interrupted us. "I see," said he, "that the average amount of ammonia in the 33 samples of dry peat a.n.a.lyzed by Professor Johnson is 2.07 per cent. I had no idea that muck was so rich. Barn-yard manure, or the manure from the horse stables in the cities, contains only half a per cent (0.5) of ammonia, and it is an unusually rich manure that contains one per cent. We are safe in saying that a ton of dry muck, on the average, contains at least twice as much potential ammonia as the average of our best and richest stable-manure."

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT IS POTENTIAL AMMONIA?

"You say," said the Deacon, "that dry muck contains twice as much '_potential ammonia_' as manure?"

"Yes," said the Doctor, "it contains three or four times as much as the half-rotted straw and stalks you call manure."

"But what do you mean," asked the Deacon, "by '_potential_ ammonia?'"

"It is a term," said the Doctor, "we used to hear much more frequently than we do now. Ammonia is composed of 14 lbs. of nitrogen and 3 lbs. of hydrogen; and if, on a.n.a.lysis, a guano or other manure was found to contain, in whatever form, 7 per cent of nitrogen, the chemist reported that he found in it 8 per cent of 'potential' ammonia. Dried blood contains no ammonia, but if it contained 14 per cent of nitrogen, the chemist would be justified in saying it contained 17 per cent of potential ammonia, from the fact that the dried blood, by fermentation, is capable of yielding this amount of ammonia. We say a ton of common horse-manure contains 10 or 12 lbs. of potential ammonia. If perfectly fresh, it may not contain a particle of ammonia; but it contains nitrogen enough to produce, by fermentation, 10 or 12 lbs. of ammonia.

And when it is said that dry swamp-muck contains, on the average, 2.07 per cent of potential ammonia, it simply means that it contains nitrogen enough to produce this amount of ammonia. In point of fact, I suppose muck, when dug fresh from the swamp, contains no ammonia. Ammonia is quite soluble in water, and if there was any ammonia in the swamp-muck, it would soon be washed out. The nitrogen, or 'potential ammonia,' in the muck exists in an inert, insoluble form, and before the muck will yield up this nitrogen to plants, it is necessary, in some way, to ferment or decompose it. But this is a point we will discuss at a future meeting."

CHAPTER VII.

TILLAGE IS MANURE.

The Doctor has been invited to deliver a lecture on manure before our local Farmers' Club. "The etymological meaning of the word manure," he said, "is _hand labor_, from _main_, hand, and _ouvrer_, to work. To manure the land originally meant to cultivate it, to hoe, to dig, to plow, to harrow, or stir it in any way so as to expose its particles to the oxygen of the atmosphere, and thus render its latent elements a.s.similable by plants.

"When our first parent," he continued, "was sent forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken, he probably did not know that the means necessary to kill the thorns and thistles enhanced the productiveness of the soil, yet such was undoubtedly the case.

"The farmer for centuries was simply a 'tiller of the ground.' Guano, though formed, according to some eminent authorities, long ages before the creation of man, was not then known. The coprolites lay undisturbed in countless numbers in the lias, the greensand, and the Suffolk crag.

Charleston phosphates were unknown. Superphosphate, sulphate of ammonia, nitrate of soda, and kainit were not dreamed of. Nothing was said about the mineral manure theory, or the exhaustion of the soil. There were no frauds in artificial fertilizers; no Experiment Stations. The earth, fresh from the hands of its Creator, needed only to be 'tickled with a hoe to laugh with a harvest.' Nothing was said about the value of the manure obtained from the consumption of a ton of oil-cake, or malt-combs, or bran, or clover-hay. For many centuries, the hoe, the spade, and the rake const.i.tuted Adam's whole stock in trade.

"At length," continued the Doctor, "a great discovery was made. A Roman farmer--probably a prominent Granger--stumbled on a mighty truth.

Manuring the land--that is, hoeing and cultivating it--increased its fertility. This was well known--had been known for ages, and acted upon; but this Roman farmer, Stercutius, who was a close observer, discovered that the _droppings of animals_ had the same effect as hoeing. No wonder these idolatrous people voted him a G.o.d. They thought there would be no more old-fas.h.i.+oned manuring; no more hoeing.

"Of course they were mistaken," continued the Doctor, "our arable land will always need plowing and cultivating to kill weeds. Manure, in the sense in which we now use the term, is only a partial subst.i.tute for tillage, and tillage is only a partial subst.i.tute for manure; but it is well to bear in mind that the words mean the same thing, and the effects of both are, to a certain extent, identical. Tillage is manure, and manure is tillage."