deficient? and of what has it been exhausted by subsequent crops?" I
judge that my gravelly hill-sides would reward the application of two
hundred loads (or tuns) of pure clay per acre, as I think the clay flats
which border Lake Champlain would pay for a like application of sand or
fine gravel where that material is found in convenient proximity; and
yet, I know very well that, on at least three-fourths of our country's
area, such application would cost far more than it would be worth. Every
farmer must act on his knowledge of his soil and its peculiar needs, and
not blindly follow the dictum of another. Yet I know few farms which,
were they mine, I would not consider enhanced in value by a vigorous
application of _some_ alkaline substance--Lime, Salt, Ashes, or some of
the cheaper Nitrates. I should be very glad to apply one thousand
bushels of good house-made, hard-wood Ashes to my twenty acres of
arable upland, if I could buy them, delivered, at twenty five cents per
bushel; but they are not to be had. I doubt that there are a hundred
acres of warm, dry, gravelly or sandy soil east of the Alleghanies that
would not amply reward a similar application. But Ashes in quantity are
unattainable, since no good farmer sells them, and Coal is the chief
fuel of cities and villages. The Marls of New-Jersey I judge fully equal
in average value to Ashes which have been nearly deprived of their
potash by leaching, but not quite half equal, bushel for bushel, to
_un_leached Ashes. I judge that average Marl is worth 10 cents per
bushel where Ashes may be had for 25. But Marl is found only in a few
localities, and a material worth but 10 cents per bushel will not bear
transportation beyond 40 miles by wagon or 200 by water. Salt is only
found or made at a few points, and is too dear for general use as a
fertilizer. Where the refuse product of Salt-Works can be cheaply
bought, good farmers will eagerly compete for it, if their lands at all
resemble mine. I judge the tun of Potash I ordered fifteen years ago
from Syracuse, paying $50 and transportation, was the cheapest
fertilizer I ever bought. It was so impregnated with Salt (from the
boiling over of the salt-kettles into the ashes) as to be worthless for
other than agricultural purposes; but I mixed it with a large pile of
Muck that I had recently dug, and, six or eight months thereafter,
applied the product to a very poor, gravelly hill-side which I had just
broken up; and the immediate result was a noble crop of Corn. That
hill-side has not yet forgotten the application.
--If I should try to explain just how and why Lime is a fertilizer, I
should probably fail; and I am well assured that liming has in some
cases been overdone; yet I think most observers will concur in my
statement that _any region which has been limed year after year produces
crops of noticeable excellence_. I cite as examples Chester and
Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania, with Stark and adjacent counties of
Ohio. Possibly, results equally gratifying might be secured by applying
some other substance; I only _know_ that frequently limed lands are
generally good lands, as their crops do testify. I heartily wish that
the flat clay intervales of Western Vermont could have a fair trial of
the virtues of liming. I should expect to see them thereby rendered
friable and arable; no longer changing speedily from the semblance of
tar to that of brick, but readily plowed and tilled, and yielding
liberally of Grain as well as Grass. I am confident that most farms in
our country will pay for liming to the extent of fifty bushels per acre
where the cost of quick-lime does not exceed ten cents per bushel; and
most farmers, by taking, hot from the kiln, the refuse lime that is
deemed unfit for building purposes, can obtain it cheaper than that.
I wish some farmer who gives constant personal attention to his work--as
I cannot--would make some careful tests of the practical value of
alkalis. For instance: the abundance and tenacity of our common sorrel
is supposed to indicate an acid condition of the soil; and all who have
tried it know that sorrel is hard to kill by cultivation. I suggest that
whoever is troubled with it should cover two square rods with one bushel
of quick-lime just after plowing and harrowing this Spring; then apply
another bushel to _four_ square rods adjacent; then make similar
applications of ashes to two and four square rods respectively, taking
careful note of the boundaries of each patch, and leaving the rest of
the field destitute of either application. I will not anticipate the
result: more than one year may be required to evolve it; but I am
confident that a few such experiments would supply data whereof I am in
need; and there are doubtless others whose ignorance is nearly equal to
mine.
Many have applied Lime to their fields without realizing any advantage
therefrom. In some cases, there was already a sufficiency of this
ingredient in the soil, and the application of more was one of those
many wasteful blunders induced by our ignorance of Chemistry. But much
Lime is naturally adulterated with other minerals, especially with
Manganese, so that its application to most if not to all soils subserves
no good end. In the absence of exact, scientific knowledge, I would buy
fifty bushels of quick-lime, apply them to one acre running through a
field, and watch the effect. If it doesn't pay, you have a bad article,
or your soil is not deficient in Lime.
XIX.
SOILS AND FERTILIZERS.
A farmer is a manufacturer of articles wherefrom mankind are fed and
clad; his raw materials are the soil and the various substances he
mingles therewith or adds thereto in order to increase its productive
capacity. His art consists in transforming by cultivation crude,
comparatively worthless, and even noxious, offensive materials into
substances grateful to the senses, nourishing to the body, and sometimes
invigorating, even strengthening, to the mind.
I have heard of lands that were naturally rich enough; I never was so
lucky or perchance so discerning as to find them. Yet I have seen
Illinois bottoms whereof I was assured that the soil was fully sixteen
feet deep, and a rich, black alluvium from top to bottom; and I do not
question the statements made to me from personal observation that
portions of the strongly alkaline plain or swale on which Salt Lake City
is built, being for the first time plowed, irrigated, and sown to Wheat,
yielded ninety bushels of good grain per acre. I never saw, yet on
evidence believe, that pioneer settlers of the Miami Valley, wishing,
some years after settling there, to sell their farms, advertised them as
peculiarly desirable in that the barns stood over a creek or "branch,"
which swept away the manure each Winter or Spring without trouble to the
owner; and I have myself grown both Wheat and Oats that were very rank
and heavy in straw, yet which fell so flat and lay so dead that the
heads scarcely bore a kernel. Had I been a wiser, better farmer, I
should have known how to stiffen the straw and make it do its office, in
spite of wind and storm.
[And let me here say, lest I forget it in its appropriate place, that I
am confident that most farmers sow grain too thickly for any but very
poor land. If one thinks it necessary to scatter three bushels of Oats
per acre, I tell him that he should apply more manure and less
seed--that land which requires three bushels of seed is not rich enough
to bear Oats. He might better concentrate his manure on half so much
land, and save two-thirds of his seed.]
I do not hold that the remarkably rich soils I have instanced needed
fertilizing when first plowed; I will presume that they did not. Yet,
having never yet succeeded in manuring a corn-field so high that a few
loads more would not (I judge) have increased the crop, I doubt whether
even the richest Illinois bottoms would not yield more Corn, year by
year, if reenforced with the contents of a good barn-yard. And, when the
first heavy crop of Corn has been taken from a field, that field--no
matter how deep and fertile its soil--is less rich in corn-forming
elements than it was before. Just so sure as that there is no depletion
or shrinkage when nothing is taken from nothing, so sure is it that
something cannot be taken from something without diminishing its
capacity to yield something at the next call. Rotation of crops is an
excellent plan; for one may flourish on that which another has rejected;
but this does not overbear Nature's inflexible exaction of so much for
so much. Hence, if there ever was a field so rich that nothing could be
added that would increase its productive capacity, the first exacting
crop thereafter taken from it diminished that capacity, and rendered a
fresh application of some fertilizer desirable.
Years ago, a Western man exhibited at our Farmers' Club a specimen of
the soil of his region which was justly deemed very rich, taken from a
field whereon Corn had been repeatedly grown without apparent
exhaustion. A chemical analysis had been made of it, which was submitted
with the soil. It was claimed that nothing could improve its capacity
for producing the great Illinois staple. Prof. Mapes dissented from this
conclusion. "This soil," said he, "while very rich in nearly every
element which enters into the composition of Corn, gives barely a trace
of Chlorine, the base of Salt. Hence, if five bushels per acre of Salt
be applied to that field, and it does not thereupon yield five bushels
more per annum of Corn, I will agree to eat the field."
Many men fertilize their poor lands only, supposing that the better can
do without. I judge that to be a mistake. My rule would be to plant the
poorest with such choice trees as thrive without manure, and pile the
fertilizers upon the better. It seems to me plain that of two fields,
one of which has a soil containing nine-tenths of the elements of the
desired crop, while the other shows but one to three-tenths, it is a
more hopeful and less thankless task to enrich the former than the
latter. If you are required to supply to a field nearly everything that
your proposed crop will withdraw from it, I do not see where the profit
comes in; but if you are required to supply but a tenth, because the
soil as you found it stood ready to contribute the remaining
nine-tenths, it seems to me that the margin for profit is here decidedly
the greater.
How many tuns of earth ought a farmer to be obliged to turn over and
over in order to obtain therefrom a hundred bushels of Corn? Two
hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? _Five_ thousand? Other things being
equal, no one will doubt that, if he can make the Corn from one hundred
tuns of soil, it were better to do so than to employ five hundred or
five thousand. It seems clear to my mind that, though other conditions
be unequal, it is generally well to endeavor to produce the required
quantity from the smaller rather than the larger area.
I fully share the average farmer's partiality for barn-yard manure in
preference to most, if not all, commercial fertilizers. In my judgment,
almost any farmer who has cattle, with fit shelter and Winter fodder,
can make fertilizers far cheaper than he can buy them. I judge that
almost every farmer who has paid $100 or over for Guano (for instance),
might have more considerably enriched his farm by drawing muck from some
convenient bog or pond into his barn-yard in August or September and
carting it thence to his fields the next Fall. If he can get no muck
within a mile, let him cut, when they are in blossom, all the weeds that
grow near him, especially by the road-side, cart them at once into his
barn-yard, and there convert them into fertilizers. In Autumn, replace
the hay-rack on the wagon or cart, and pile load after load of
freshly-fallen leaves into your yard; taking them, if you may, from the
sides of roads and fences, and from any place where they may have been
lodged or heaped by the winds, your own wood-lot excepted. Plow the turf
off of any scurvy lot or road-side, and pile it into the barn-yard; nay,
dig a hundred loads of pure clay, and place it there, if you can get it
at a small expense, and your average soil is gravelly or sandy. The
farmer who is unable or reluctant to buy commercial fertilizers should
apply his whole force every Autumn to replenishing his barn-yard with
that material which he can obtain most easily which the trampling of his
cattle may readily convert into manure. A month is too little, two
months would not be too much, to devote to this good work. Some may seem
obliged to postpone it to Winter; but that is to run the risk of
embarrassment by frost or snow, and encounter the certainty that your
material will be inferior in quality, or not so well fitted to apply to
grain-crops the ensuing Fall.
--All this, you may say, is not instruction. We ought to know exactly
what lands are enriched by Gypsum, and what, if any, are not; why these
are fertilized, why those are not, by a common application; how great is
the profit of such application in any case; and what substitute can most
nearly subserve the same ends where Gypsum is not to be had. I admit all
you claim, and do not doubt that there shall yet be a Scientific
Agriculture that will fully answer your requirements. As yet, however,
it exists but in suggestions and fragments; and attempts to complete it
by naked assertions and sweeping generalizations tend rather to mislead
and disgust the young farmer than really to enlighten and guide him. At
all events, I shall aim to set forth as true no more than I know, or
with good reason confidently believe.
I close by reiterating my belief that no farmer ever yet impoverished
himself by making too much manure or by applying too much of his own
manufacture. I cannot speak so confidently of _buying_ commercial
fertilizers; but these I will discuss in my next chapter.
XX.
BONES--PHOSPHATES--GUANO.
I hate to check improvement or chill the glow of Faith; yet I do so
keenly apprehend that many of our people, especially among the Southern
cotton-growers, are squandering money on Commercial Fertilizers, that I
am bound to utter my note of warning, even though it should pass wholly
unheeded. Let me make my position as clear as I can.
I live in a section which has been cultivated for more than two
centuries, while its proximity to a great city has tempted to crop it
incessantly, exhaustively. Wheat while its original surface soil of six
to twelve inches of vegetable mold (mainly composed of decayed
forest-leaves) remained; then Corn and Oats; at length, Milk, Beef, and
Apples--have exhausted the hill-sides and gentler slopes of Westchester
County, except where they have been kept in heart by judicious culture
and liberal fertilizing; and, even here, that subtle element,
Phosphorus, which enters minutely but necessarily into the composition
of every animal and nearly every vegetable structure has been gradually
drawn away in Grain, in Milk, in Bones, and not restored to the soil by
the application of ordinary manures. I am convinced that a field may be
so manured as to give three tuns of Hay per acre, yet so destitute of
Phosphorus that a sound, healthy animal cannot be grown therefrom. For
two centuries, the tillers of Westchester County knew nothing of
Chemistry or Phosphorus, and allowed the unvalued bones of their animals
to be exported to fatten British meadows, without an effort to retain
them. Hence, it has become absolutely essential that we buy and apply
Phosphates, even though the price be high; for our land can no longer do
without them. Wherever a steer or heifer can occasionally be caught
gnawing or mumbling over an old bone, there Phosphates are
indispensable, no matter at what cost. Better pay $100 per tun for a
dressing of one hundred pounds of Bone per acre than try to do without.
But no lands recently brought into cultivation--no lands where the bones
of the animals fed thereon have been allowed, for unnumbered years past,
to mingle with the soil--can be equally hungry for Phosphates; and I
doubt that any cotton-field in the South will ever return an outlay of
even $50 per tun for any Phosphatic fertilizer whatever. That _any_
preparation of Bone, or whereof Bone is a principal element, will
increase the succeeding crops, is undoubted; but that it will ever
return its cost and a decent margin of profit, is yet to be demonstrated
to my satisfaction.
No doubt, there are special cases in which the application even of
Peruvian Guano at $90 per tun is advisable. A compost of Muck, Lime,
&c., equally efficient, might be far cheaper; but months would be
required to prepare and perfect it, and meantime the farmer would lose
his crop, or fail to make one. If a tun of Guano, or of some expensive
Phosphate, will give him six or eight acres of Clover where he would
otherwise have little or none, and he needs that Clover to feed the team
wherewith he is breaking up and fitting his farm to grow a good crop
next year, he may wisely make the purchase and application, even though
he may be able to compost for next year's use twice the value of
fertilizers for the precise cost of this. But I am so thorough in my
devotion to "home industry," that I hold him an unskillful farmer who
cannot, nine times in ten, make, mainly from materials to be found on or
near his farm, a pile of compost for $100 that will add more to the
enduring fertility of his farm than anything he can bring from a
distance at a cost of $150.
Understand that this is a general rule, and subject, like all general
rules, to exceptions. Gypsum, I think every farmer should buy; Lime
also, if his soil needs it; Phosphates in some shape, if past ignorance
or folly has allowed that soil to be despoiled of them; Wood Ashes, if
any one can be found so brainless as to sell them; Marl, of course,
where it is found within ten miles; Guano very rarely, and mainly when
something is needed to make a crop before coarser and colder
fertilizers can be brought into a condition of fitness for use; but the
general rule I insist on is this: A good farmer will, in the course of
twenty or thirty years, make at least $10 worth of fertilizers for every
dollar's worth he buys from any dealer, unless it be the sweepings or
other excretions of some not distant city.
I have used Guano frequently, and, though it has generally made its
mark, I never yet felt sure that it returned me a profit over its cost.
Phosphates have done better, especially where applied to Corn in the
hill, either at the time of planting or later; yet my strong impression
is that Flour of Bone, applied broadcast and freely, especially when
Wheat or Oats are sown on a field that is to be laid down to Grass, pays
better and more surely than anything else I order from the City, Gypsum,
and possibly Oyster-Shell Lime, excepted.
My experience can be no safe guide for others, since it is not proved
that the anterior condition and needs of their soils are precisely like
those of mine. I apprehend that Guano has not had a fair trial on my
place--that carelessness in pulverizing or in application has caused it
to "waste its sweetness on the desert air," or that a drouth following
its application has prevented the due development of its virtues. And
still my impression that Guano is the brandy of vegetation, supplying to
plants stimulus rather than nutrition, is so clear and strong that it
may not easily be effaced. It seems to me plainly absurd to send ten
thousand miles for this stimulant, when this or any other great city
annually poisons its own atmosphere and the adjacent waters with
excretions which are of very similar character and value, and which
Science and Capital might combine to utilize at less than half the cost
of like elements in the form of Guano.
My object in this paper is to incite experiment and careful observation.
No farmer should absolutely trust aught but his own senses. A Rhode
Islander once assured me that he applied to four acres of thin, slaty
gravel one hundred pounds per acre of Nitrate of Soda which cost him $4
per hundred, and obtained therefrom four additional tuns of good Hay,
worth $15 per tun: Net profit (after allowing for the cost of making the
Hay), say $30. He might not be so fortunate on a second trial, and there
may not be another four acres of the earth's surface where Nitrate of
Soda would do so well; but, should I ever have a fair opportunity, I
mean to see what a little of that Nitrate will do for _me_. And I hope
farmers may more and more be induced to conform in practice to the
Apostolic precept, "Prove all things: Hold fast that which is good." No
one's success or failure in a particular instance should be conclusive
with others, because of the infinite diversity of antecedent and
attendant circumstances; but if every thrifty farmer would give to each
of the commercial fertilizers--Lime, Gypsum, Guano, Raw Bone,
Phosphates, Ashes, Salt, Marl, etc.--such a careful trial as he might,
observing closely and recording carefully the results, we should soon
have a mass of facts and results, wherefrom deductions might be drawn of
signal practical value to the present and to future generations.
I firmly believe that great results of signal beneficence are to be
slowly but surely achieved by means of the household convenience known
as the Earth-Closet, and by kindred devices for rendering inoffensive
and utilizing the most powerful fertilizer produced on every farm and in
every household. That is a vulgar squeamishness which leaves it to
poison the atmosphere and offend the senses on the assumption that it is
too noisome to be dealt with or utilized. A true refinement counsels
that it be daily covered, and its odor absorbed or suppressed by earth,
or muck, or ashes, and thus prepared for removal to and incorporation
with the soil. It is far within the truth to estimate our National loss
by the waste of this material at $1 per head, or $40,000,000 in all per
annum: a waste which is steadily diminishing the productive capacity of
our soil. This cannot, must not, be allowed to continue. We must devise
or adopt _some_ mode of securing and applying this powerful fertilizer;
and I defer to that which is already in extensive and daily expanding
use. Let whoever can do better; but meantime let us welcome and diffuse
the Earth Closet.
XXI.
MUCK--HOW TO UTILIZE IT.
The time will be, I cannot doubt, when chemists can tell us the exact
positive or relative value of a cord of Muck--how this swamp or that
pond affords a choice article, while the product of another will hardly
pay for digging. There may be chemists whose judgment on these points is
now worth far more than mine, since mine is worth exactly nothing. I
_do_ know, however, that Muck is a valuable fertilizer, and that digging
and composting it _does pay_. I judge that I have transferred at least
three thousand loads of it from my swamp to my upland; and the effect
had been all that I expected. Let me speak of Muck generally, in the
light, of my own experience.
Wherever rocks in ridges come to the surface of a valley, plain, or
gentle slope, water is apt to be collected or retained by them, forming
ponds or shallower pools, which may or may not dry up in Summer, but
which are seldom dry late in Autumn, when plants are dying and leaves
are falling. The latter, caught in their descent by the harsh winds of
the season, are swept along the bare, dry ground, till they strike the
water, which arrests their progress and soon engulfs them. Thus an acre
of watery surface will often collect, and retain the dead foliage of
five to ten acres of forest; and next Fall will render its kindred
tribute, and the next, and the next, for ever. There cannot be less than
fifty millions of acres of Swamps in our old States (including Maine);
whereof I presume the larger area was covered with water until the slow
contributions of leaves and weeds filled them above the level at which
water is no longer retained on the surface. And still, they are so moist
and boggy, and their rank vegetation is so retentive, that the leaves
swept in from the adjacent hills and glades are firmly retained and aid
to increase the depth of their vegetable mold, which varies from a few
inches to twenty and even thirty feet. In my old County of Westchester,
I roughly estimate that there are at least five thousand acres of bog,
whereof but a very few hundreds have yet been subdued to the uses of
cultivation.
Whoever digs a quantity of Swamp Muck and applies it _directly_ to his
fields or garden, will derive little or no immediate benefit therefrom.
It is green, sour, cold, and more likely to cover his farm thickly and
persistently with Sorrel, Eye-smart, Rag-weed, Parsley, and other
infestations, than to add a bushel per acre to his crop of Grain or
Roots. And thus many have tried Muck, and, on trial, pronounced it a
pestilent humbug.