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 mass 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.”
[Illustration: 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 analyses 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 analyzed 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.”