Southern planter - The W&M Digital Archive

859.] THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 445
iavc found that this also gives me another
.dvantage, for the deeper I get my farm,
he higher my grain grows, so I gain in
10th directions, and by this means I reckon
've got at least thirty per cent, more availa-
»le space than formerly; at any rate my
cventy dollars per acre land would now
ring me ninety dollars—but I hav'nt got
o the bottom nor top of it yet, and I mean
o stick to it.
I have found by experiment that it is
•est to run the plow deeper when raising
ats and winter grain, rather than when
ireaking up for corn.
Corn is an aristocratic plant as you might
mow by its tasseled head, silk gloves, and
3ng ears, and like such gentry it must have
;ood nursing in the beginning, and the best
iving the land will afford. It sends its
oots about, near the surface where it can
ind plenty of food, and where they can
;row comfortably near the warm surface,
f you plow deep enough to turn up the
old and hard subsoil, the seed planted at
he usual depth will germinate where they
oeet With a cold reception, especially if
he season be wet. Scarce any crop seems
o be more benefitted by an early start, or to
•e more injured by a slow, painful growth in
n the commencement. The young plants
eem to be discouraged, and not having
brce enough to dig down to find a good
iving, they are apt to grow up sickly.
In cultivating this crop I have, therefore,
>ractised turning up all the soil, gaging my
>low to run just on the subsoil, and let the
:orn have the full benefit of the manure
,nd clover which were plowed under. The
:rop is followed with oats, which can stand
, cold and wet soil better. Then I drive
he plow deeper, about an inch, as you re-
:ommended in your last number. The soil,
nellowed by the previous hoed crops, gives
he oats a good chance, and they bear the
ubsoil mixture on the top quite well. The
bllowing crop with me is rye and seeded
lown with clover and timothy, especially
he former. Now I give the gage another
urn, and bring up say another inch of sub-
loil, and the rye and the clover dig for
heir living—and mine—most admirably.
. « • • > >
dotation and Deep Soil—A Corn Experiment.
Regular rotation of crops and deep plowng
are working wonders upon some of the
)ld and long-worn farms of New England
In the discussions before the Maine State
Board of Agriculture, which met at the
seat of government in January, many of
the delegates bore striking and uniform testimony
to the value of both these practices,
especially upon land* that had been cropped
hard. One of the members mentioned a field
of fifteen acres, "badly bound out," which
was plowed three inches deeper than ever before,
and after an application of three bushels
of plaster of Paris, produced a yield of
600 bushels of oats This is forty bushels
to the acre. Another reported a yield 82
bushels shelled corn per acre—56 lbs., to
the bushel, from a field similarly treated.
Results very much like these could be
obtained from many of the old fields in
Kentucky, which now grow nothing but
sedge and briars, if deeply plowed, and the
application of plaster were substituted by a
generous quantity of barn-yard manure or a
compost of which the base should be stable
dung and scrapings from the woods.
We have our mind's eye now upon an
old field twelve miles from Louisville, which
was treated in this manner three years ago,
and gave a yield of corn in return that much
more than paid expenses. Without further
preparation it was seeded to grass, sown
upon the corn stubble, and will this season
be more than fair pasture or meadow, for one
or the other of which it is designed. The
corn in this experiment was manured in
the hill.
Our farmers complain of the great labor
and heavy cost of such experiments. But
such complaints are without reason. Every
farmer who keeps merely two or three
horses, four or, five cattle, a half dozen
hogs, if he will only litter his stalls, pens
and .barn-yard, with the cheap litter afforded
by the woods a short distance from his.
dwelling-house, in quantities enough to furnish
his animals with comfortable bedding,
he can have every year, by planting time
in the spring, a mountain of compost such
as we have described that will perfectly as-
tonish his own eyes.
So much for the cost of that part of the
experiment. It really costs nothing, for it
will pay for itself in the increased comfort
supplied to his stock, and the diminished
quantity of food necessary to carry them
through the winter. As for the labor and
expense of hauling out, that is not very formidable,
when you post up and look the
thing right in the face.