footsteps of his respected grandfather, but with inferior success,
because sixty annual harvests, though not particularly luxuriant, have
partially exhausted the productive capacity of the acres he inherited.
He now garners from fifteen to thirty bushels per acre of Corn, from ten
to twenty of Wheat, from fifteen to twenty of Rye, from twenty to thirty
of Oats, and from a tun to a tun and a half of Hay, as the season proves
more or less propitious, and just contrives to draw from his sixty to
one hundred acres a decent subsistence for his family; plowing, as his
father and grandfather did, to a depth of five to seven inches: What can
Deep Plowing do for _him_?
I answer--By itself, nothing whatever. If in every other respect he is
to persist in doing just as his father and his grandfather did, I doubt
the expediency of doubling the depth of his furrows. True, the worst
effects of the change would be realized at the outset, and I feel
confident that his six inches of subsoil, having been made to change
places with that which formerly rested upon it, must gradually be
wrought upon by air, and rain, and frost, until converted into a
tolerably productive soil, through which the roots of most plants would
easily and speedily make their way down to the richer stratum which,
originally surface, has been transposed into subsoil. But this exchange
of positions between the original surface and subsoil is not what I mean
by Deep Plowing, nor anything like it. What I _do_ mean is this:
Having thoroughly underdrained a field, so that water will not stand
upon any part of its surface, no matter how much may there be deposited,
the next step in order is to increase the depth of the soil. To this
end, procure a regular sub-soil plow of the most approved pattern,
attach to it a strong team, and let it follow the breaking-plow in its
furrow, lifting and pulverizing the sub-soil to a depth of not less than
six inches, but leaving it in position exactly where it was. The
surface-plow turns the next furrow upon this loosened sub-soil, and so
on till the whole field is thus pulverized to a depth of not less than
twelve inches, or, better still, fifteen. Now, please remember that you
have twice as much soil per acre to fertilize as there was before;
hence, that it consequently requires twice as much manure, and you will
have laid a good foundation for increased crops. I do not say that all
the additional outlay will be returned to you in the increase of your
next crop, for I do not believe anything of the sort; but I _do_ believe
that this crop will be considerably larger for this generous treatment,
especially if the season prove remarkably dry or uncommonly wet; and
that you will have insured better crops in the years to come, including
heavier grass, after that field shall once more be laid down; and that,
in case of the planting of that field to fruit or other trees, they will
grow faster, resist disease better, and thrive longer, than if the soil
were still plowed as of old. (I shall insist hereafter on the advantage
and importance of subsoiling orchards.)
Take another aspect--that of subsoiling hill-sides to prevent their
abrasion by water:
I have two bits of warm, gravelly hill-side, which bountifully yield
Corn, Wheat and Oats, but which are addicted to washing. I presume one
of these bits, at the south-east corner of my farm, has been plowed and
planted not less than one hundred times, and that at least half the
fertilizers applied to it have been washed into the brook, and hence
into the Hudson. To say that $1,000 have thus been squandered on that
patch of ground, would be to keep far within the truth. And, along with
the fertilizers, a large portion of the finer and better elements of the
original soil have thus been swept into the brook, and so lavished upon
the waters of our bay. But, since I had those lots thoroughly subsoiled,
all the water that falls upon them when in tillage sinks into the soil,
and remains there until drained away by filtration or evaporation; and I
never saw a particle of soil washed from either save once, when a thaw
of one or two inches on the surface, leaving the ground solidly frozen
beneath, being quickly followed by a pouring rain, washed away a few
bushels of the loosened and sodden surface, proving that the law by
virtue of which these fields were formerly denuded while in cultivation
is still active, and that Deep Plowing is an effective and all but
unfailing antidote for the evil it tends to incite.
We plow too many acres annually, and do not plow them so thoroughly as
we ought. In the good time coming, when Steam shall have been so
harnessed to a gang of six to twelve plows that, with one man guiding
and firing, it will move as fast as a man ought to walk, steaming on and
thoroughly pulverizing from twelve to twenty-five acres per day, I
believe we shall plow at least two feet deep, and plow not less than
twice before putting in any crop whatever. Then we may lay down a field
in the confident trust that it will yield from two and a half to three
tuns of good hay per annum for the next ten or twelve years; while, by
the help of irrigation and occasional top-dressing, it may be made to
average at least three tuns for a life-time, if not forever.
When my Grass-land requires breaking up--as it sometimes does--I
understand that it was not properly laid down, or has not been well
treated since. A good grazing farmer once insisted in my hearing that
grass-land should _never_ be plowed--that the vegetable mold forming the
surface, when the timber was first cut off; should remain on the surface
forever. Considering how uneven the stumps and roots and cradle-knolls
of a primitive forest are apt to leave the ground, I judge that this is
an extreme statement. But land once thoroughly plowed and subsoiled
ought thereafter to be kept in grass by liberal applications of Gypsum,
well-cured Muck, and barn-yard Manure to its surface, without needing to
be plowed again and reseeded. Put back in Manure what is taken of in
Hay, and the Grass should hold its own.
XVI.
THOROUGH TILLAGE.
My little, hilly, rocky farm teaches lessons of thoroughness which I
would gladly impart to the boys of to-day who are destined to be the
farmers of the last quarter of this century. I am sure they will find
profit in farming better than their grandfathers did, and especially in
putting their land into the best possible condition for effective
tillage. There were stones in my fields varying in size from that of a
brass kettle up to that of a hay-cock--some of them raising their heads
above the surface, others burrowing just below it--which had been plowed
around and over perhaps a hundred times, till I went at them with team
and bar, or (where necessary) with drill and blast, turned or blew them
out, and hauled them away, so that they will interfere with cultivation
nevermore. I insist that this is a profitable operation--that a field
which will not pay for such clearing should be planted with trees and
thrown out of cultivation conclusively. Dodging and skulking from rock
to rock is hard upon team, plow, and plowman; and it can rarely pay.
Land ribbed and spotted with fast rocks will pay if judiciously planted
with Timber--possibly if well set in Fruit--but tilling it from year to
year is a thankless task; and its owner may better work by the day for
his neighbors than try to make his bread by such tillage.
So with fields soaked by springs or sodden with stagnant water. If you
say you cannot afford to drain your wet land, I respond that you can
still less afford to till it without draining. If you really cannot
afford to fit it for cultivation, your next best course is to let it
severely alone.
A poor man who has a rough, rugged, sterile farm, which he is unable to
bring to its best possible condition at once, yet which he clings to and
must live from, should resolve that, if life and health be spared him,
he will reclaim one field each year until all that is not devoted to
timber shall have been brought into high condition. When his Summer
harvest is over, and his Fall crops have received their last
cultivation, there will generally be from one to two Autumn months which
he can devote mainly to this work. Let him take hold of it with resolute
purpose to improve every available hour, not by running over the largest
possible area, but by dealing with one field so thoroughly that it will
need no more during a long life-time. If it has stone that the plow will
reach, dig them out; if it needs draining, drain it so thoroughly that
it may hereafter be plowed in Spring so soon as the frost leaves it; and
now let soil and subsoil be so loosened and pulverized that roots may
freely penetrate them to a depth of fifteen to twenty inches, finding
nourishment all the way, with incitement to go further if ever failing
moisture shall render this necessary. Drouth habitually shortens our
Fall crops from ten to fifty per cent.; it is sure to injure us more
gravely as our forests are swept away by ax and fire; and, while much
may be done to mitigate its ravages by enriching the soil so as to give
your crops an early start, and a rank, luxuriant growth, the farmer's
chief reliance must still be a depth of soil adequate to withstand weeks
of the fiercest sunshine.
I have considered what is urged as to the choice of roots to run just
beneath the surface, and it does not signify. Roots seek at once heat
and moisture; if the moisture awaits them close to the surface, of
course they mainly run there, because the heat is there greatest. If
moisture fails there, they must descend to seek it, even at the cost of
finding the heat inadequate--though heat increases and descends under
the fervid suns which rob the surface of moisture. Make the soil rich
and mellow ever so far down, and you need not fear that the roots will
descend an inch lower than they should. _They_ understand their
business; it is _your_ sagacity that may possibly prove deficient.
I suspect that the average farmer does far too little plowing--by which
I mean, not that he plows too few acres, for he often plows too many,
but that he should plow oftener as well as deeper and more thoroughly.
I spent three or four of my boyish Summers planting and tilling Corn and
Potatoes on fields broken up just before they were planted, never
cross-plowed, and of course tough and intractable throughout the season.
The yield of Corn was middling, considering the season; that of Potatoes
more than middling; yet, if those fields had been well plowed in the
previous Autumn, cross-plowed early in the Spring; and thoroughly
harrowed just before planting-time, I am confident that the yield would
have been far greater, and the labor (save in harvesting) rather
less--the cost of the Fall plowing being over-balanced by the saving of
half the time necessarily given to the planting and hoeing.
Fall Plowing has this recommendation--it lightens labor at the busier
season, by transferring it to one of comparative dullness. I may have
said that I consider him a good farmer who knows how to make a rainy day
equally effective with one that is dry and fair; and, in the same
spirit, I count him my master in this art who can make a day's work in
Autumn or Winter save a day's work in Spring or Summer. Show me a farmer
who has no land plowed when May opens, and is just waking up to a
consciousness that his fences need mending and his trees want trimming,
and I will guess that the sheriff will be after him before May comes
round again.
* * * * *
There is no superstition in the belief that land is (or may be) enriched
by Fall Plowing. The Autumn gales are freighted with the more volatile
elements of decaying vegetation. These, taken up wherever they are given
of in excess, are wafted to and deposited in the soils best fitted for
their reception. Regarded simply as a method of fertilizing, I do not
say that Fall Plowing is the cheapest; I _do_ say that any poor field,
if well plowed in the Fall, will be in better heart the next Spring, for
what wind and rain will meantime have deposited thereon. Frost, too, in
any region where the ground freezes, and especially where it freezes and
thaws repeatedly, plays an important and beneficial part in aerating and
pulverizing a freshly plowed soil, especially one thrown up into ridges,
so as to be most thoroughly exposed to the action of the more volatile
elements. The farmer who has a good team may profitably keep the plow
running in Autumn until every rood that he means to till next season has
been thoroughly pulverized.
In this section, our minute chequer-work of fences operates to obstruct
and impede Plowing. Our predecessors wished to clear their fields, at
least superficially, of the loose, troublesome bowlders of granite
wherewith they were so thickly sown; they mistakenly fancied that they
could lighten their own toil by sending their cattle to graze, browse,
and gnaw, wherever a crop was not actually on the ground; so they fenced
their farms into patches of two or ten acres, and thought they had
thereby increased their value! That was a sad miscalculation. Weeds,
briars and bushes were sheltered, and nourished by these walls;
weasels, rats and other destructive animals, found protection and
impunity therein; a wide belt on either side was made useless or worse;
while Plowing was rendered laborious, difficult, and inefficient, by the
necessity of turning after every few hundred steps. We are growing
slowly wiser, and burying a part of these walls, or building them into
concrete barns or other useful structures; but they are still far too
plentiful, and need to be dealt with more sternly. O squatter on a wide
prairie, on the bleak Plains, or in a broad Pacific valley, where wood
must be hauled for miles and loose stone are rarely visible, thank God
for the benignant dispensation which has precluded you from half
spoiling your farm by a multiplicity of obstructing, deforming, fences,
and so left its soil free and open to be everywhere pervaded, loosened,
permeated, by the renovating Plow!
XVII.
COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS--GYPSUM.
Prices vary so widely in different localities that no fertilizer can be
pronounced everywhere cheapest or best worth buying; and yet I doubt
that there is a rood of our country's surface in fit condition to be
cultivated to which Gypsum (Plaster of Paris) might not be applied with
profit. Where it costs $10 or over per tun, I would apply it
sparingly--say, one bushel per acre--while I judge three bushels per
acre none too much in regions where it may be bought much cheaper. Even
the poor man who has but one cow, should buy a barrel of it, and dust
his stable therewith after cleaning it each day. He who has a stock of
cattle should never be without it, and should freely use it, alike in
stable and yard, to keep down the noisome odors, and thus retain the
volatile elements of the manure. Every meadow, every pasture, should be
sown with it at least triennially; where it is abundant and cheap, as in
Central New-York, I would apply it each year, unless careful observation
should satisfy me that it no longer subserved a good purpose.
As to the _time_ of application, while I judge any season will do, my
present impression is that it will do most good if applied when the
Summer is hottest and the ground driest. If, for instance, you close
your haying in mid-Summer, having been hurried by the rapid ripening of
the grass, and find your meadows baked and cracked by the intense heat,
I reckon that you may proceed to dust those meadows with Gypsum with a
moral certainty that none of it will be wasted. So if your Corn and
other Fall crops are suffering from and likely to be stunted by drouth,
I advise the application of Gypsum broadcast, as evenly as may be and as
bounteously as its price and your means will allow. I do not believe it
so well to apply it specially to the growing stalks, a spoon-full or so
per hill; and I doubt that it is ever judicious to plant it _in_ the
hill with the seed. The readiest and quickest mode of application is
also, I believe, the best.
_How_ Gypsum impels and invigorates vegetable growth, I do not pretend
to know; but that it _does_ so was demonstrated by Nature long before
Man took the hint that she freely gave. The city of Paris and a
considerable adjacent district rest on a bed of Gypsum, ranging from
five to twenty feet below the surface, and considerably decomposed in
its upper portion by the action of water. This region produces Wheat
most luxuriantly, and I presume has done so from time immemorial. At
length it crawled through the hair of the tillers of this soil that the
substance which did so much good fortuitously, and (as it were) because
it could not do otherwise, might do still more if applied to the soil,
with deliberate intent to test its value as a fertilizer. The result we
all understand.
Gypsum is a chemical compound of Sulphur and Lime--so much is agreed;
and the theory of chemists has been that; as the winds pass over a
surface sown with it, the Ammonia which has been exhaled by a thousand
barn-yards, bogs, &c., having a stronger affinity for Sulphur than Lime
has, dissolves the Gypsum, combines with the Sulphur, forming a Sulphate
of Ammonia, and leaves the Lime to get on as it may. I accept this
theory, having no reason to distrust it; and, knowing that Sulphate of
Ammonia is a powerful stimulant of vegetable growth (as any one may be
assured by buying a little of it from some druggist and making the
necessary application), I can readily see how the desired result _might_
in this way be produced. For our purpose, however, let it suffice that
_it is_ produced, of which almost any one may be convinced by sowing
with Gypsum and passing by alternate strips or belts of the same clover
field. I suspect that not many fertilizers repay their cost out of the
first crop; but I account Gypsum one of them; and I submit that no
farmer can afford not to try it. That its good effect is diminished by
many and frequent applications, is highly probable; but there is no hill
or slope to which Gypsum has never yet been applied which ought not to
make its acquaintance this very year. I am confident that there are
pastures which might be made to increase their yield of Grass one-third
by a moderate dressing of it.
I have heard Andrew B. Dickinson, late of Steuben County, and one of the
best unscientific, unlearned farmers ever produced by our State,
maintain that he can not only enrich his own farm but impoverish his
neighbors' by the free use of Gypsum on his woodless hills. The
chemist's explanation of this effect is above indicated. The plastered
land attracts and absorbs not only its own fair proportion of the
breeze-borne Ammonia, but much that, if the equilibrium had not been
disturbed by such application, would have been deposited on the adjacent
hills. As Mr. D. makes not the smallest pretensions to science, the
coincidence between his dictum and the chemist's theory is noteworthy.
Now that our country is completely gridironed with Canals and Railroads,
bringing whatever has a mercantile value very near every one's door, I
suggest that no township should go without Gypsum. Five dollars will buy
at least two barrels of it almost anywhere; and two barrels may be sown
over five or six acres. Let it be sown so that its effect (or
non-effect) may be palpable; give it a fair, careful trial, and await
the result. If it seem to subserve no good purpose, be not too swift to
enter up judgment; but buy two barrels more, vary your time and method
of application, and try again. If the result be still null, let it be
given up that Gypsum is not the fertilizer needed just there--that some
ill-understood peculiarity of soil or climate renders it there
ineffective. Then let its use be there abandoned; but it will still
remain true that, in many localities and in countless instances, Gypsum
has been fully proved one of the best and cheapest commercial
fertilizers known to mankind.
I never tried, but on the strength of others' testimony believe in the
improvement of soils by means of calcined clay or earth. Mr. Andrew B.
Dickinson showed me where he had, during a dry Autumn plowed up the
road-sides through his farm, started fires with a few roots or sticks,
and then piled on sods of the upturned clay and grass-roots till the
fire was nearly smothered, when each heap smoked and smouldered like a
little coal-pit till all of it that was combustible was reduced to
ashes, when ashes and burned clay were shoveled into a cart and strewn
over his fields, to the decided improvement of their crops. Whoever has
a clay sod to plow up, and is deficient in manure, may repeat this
experiment with a moral certainty of liberal returns.
XVIII.
ALKALIS ... SALT--ASHES--LIME.
I do not know a rood of our country's surface so rich in _all_ the
materials which enter into the production of the Grains, Grasses,
Fruits, and Vegetables, which are the objects and rewards of
cultivation, that it could not be improved by the application of
fertilizers; if there be such, I heartily congratulate the owners, and
advise them not to sell. Nor do I believe that there are many acres so
fertile that they would not produce more Indian Corn, more Hemp, more
Cotton, and more of whatever may be their appropriate staple, if
judiciously fertilized. If there be farms or fields originally so good
that manure would not increase their yield, I am confident that the
first half-dozen crops will have taken that conceit out of them.
Prairies and river-bottoms may yield ever so bounteously; but that very
luxuriance of growth insures their gradual exhaustion of certain
elements of crops, which must needs be replaced or their product will
dwindle. Whoever has sold a thousand bushels of grain, or its equivalent
in meat, from his farm, has thereby impoverished that farm, unless he
has applied something that balances its loss. "I perceive that virtue
has gone out of me," observed the Saviour, because the hem of his
garment had been touched; and every field that had been cropped might
make a similar report whenever its annual loss by abstraction has not
been balanced by some kind of fertilizer. The farmer who grows the
largest crops is the most merciless exhauster of the soil, unless he
balances his annual drafts (as good farmers rarely fail to do) by at
least equal reenforcements of the productive capacity of his fields.