Almost every kind of soil requires a management of its own. That
proper for clays, and that proper for bottom-lands, cannot be
interchanged. Bottom lands are usually composed largely of vegetable
matter and sand; and are therefore light, and easy to work; yet, as
they are now managed, they admit a less variety of crops than the
tougher and more unmanageable clay lands.
BOTTOM-LANDS FOR CORN.—Our corn-lands, strictly so called, consist of
rich intervales and river bottoms. On these corn is raised year after
year, without manuring, fallowing, clover, or any change; but one
constant, successive corn, corn, corn. It is supposed that corn may be
had for an indefinite period, so far as mere exhaustion of the soil is
concerned, if the right course is pursued. Some of the best farmers in
this region _hog_ their corn lands. _Hogging_ is turning the hogs in
upon the ripe corn, and letting them harvest it in their own way. The
saving of labor of gathering the corn and feeding it out is very
great. Some single farmers fatten from one to five hundred head of
hogs; but if this number were fed by hand and the grain gathered for
them it would require a force which would eat up the profits. When the
fatting hogs have eaten off the field (temporary fences divide large
fields into inclosures of convenient size) they are turned into
another, and the stock-hogs for another year, are let in to glean and
root for the waste and trampled corn. In this way nothing is lost.
This method _takes very little off from the land_; for the droppings
of the hogs returns a great amount of food for the soil; and the corn
stalks being burned or turned under, the land continues in good heart.
Land being hogged will be _free from cut-worms_; for the continual
rooting of the stock-hogs, which continues until the ground freezes,
throws up the eggs or insect to be destroyed by the winter. This
method of cultivation is peculiarly suited to large farms, where
extensive tracts of ground are kept under the plow.
But in the course of eight or ten years, this process renders the soil
extremely light. The action of frost upon it, after the hogs have
snout-plowed it, leaves it in the spring as light and dry as an
ash-heap. The corn will still _grow_ as well, but every high wind
will throw it down; the soil has not tenacity enough to hold up its
crop. _Clovering_ has been resorted to by some good farmers as a
remedy; but without pretending to know certainly, we suspect that
clover will not fully answer the object. Clover on hard soils,
separates the particles and renders the ground lighter, and adds
vegetable matter to its composition. This is not what bottom land
needs. It is _too_ light, and rich enough in vegetable matter.
We believe a better course will be found in putting _bottom-lands to
small grain_. To be sure, there are difficulties in the way of this;
but good farming is nothing but a compromise of difficulties. If the
month of May be cold and backward, wheat will do well and yield
freely. But if the spring is forward, May warm and wet, the grain will
run rank, break down when the head begins to fill, and, of course, the
berry, however plump and well it might have looked in the milk, will,
after it falls, for want of nourishment, light, and air, shrink and
shrivel. But even in such springs, might not an over rankness be
prevented by pasturing the grain; or even mowing it, when, as it
sometimes happens, it gets ahead of what cattle are put upon it. But,
at the worst, the grain is not lost; for if it lodges, and is spoiled
for the sickle, hogs may be turned upon it and they will thrive well.
But now comes the advantage of small grain to the soil, which will be
the same whether the crop is reaped or hogged. The straw or stubble,
in either case, remains upon the ground. This should not be _plowed
in_, but _burned, and the ashes plowed under_. To do this a strip of
eight feet should be plowed about the whole field; and fire put to it,
_on every side at once_, so that it may burn towards the centre; for
fire, driven across a field, would leap many feet of open space at a
fence. The more stubble the better, and the more weeds the better. The
ashes will give to the soil just what it lacks, cohesion or firmness,
and moisture. For, to make a dry soil moist, requires some substance
to be added, which, having an affinity for moisture, shall attract and
retain it. This is the nature of wood or straw ashes. A gentleman who
will recognize in the above much of his own practical experience,
mentioned to us a singular fact in corroboration of this reasoning.
Having a very heavy wheat or oat stubble on a bottom-land field, which
made it very hard for the plow, he burned it over; but a smart
thunder-storm coming suddenly up, the fire was extinguished, leaving
about five acres in the middle of the piece, unburned. The whole field
was then plowed. It was found that the soil in the part burned over
was more firm, and moist, all the ensuing summer; and the corn more
even, and darker colored, than that upon the five acres which escaped
the fire, and whose stubble had been plowed in.
At all events, there can be no doubt that wood-ashes would be very
advantageous to bottom lands. And we are persuaded that such soils may
be kept in wheat and corn for any length of time, if thus managed. In
conclusion, corn your bottom-lands till they are too light, hogging
instead of harvesting them; then put in wheat or oats; leave the
stubble long, burn it over, and put it into wheat again, or to corn,
as the case may be.