Southern planter - The W&M Digital Archive

446 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [July
In the instance to which we have referred,
after the field was checked off for the seed,
a two-horse wagon and three men manured
four acres per day— giving to each hill a
large shovel full of the compost. The actual
expense in this case was probably two
dollars per day, but in any case would not
be over four dollars, or one dollar per acre.
Without the manure, the old field might
possibly have yielded 25 bushels to the
acre ; with it, it yielded about 40 bushels.
Difference, 15 bushels, which, only at 33$
cents per bushel, is $5.
All this is clear gain, for the cost of hauling
out and applying the manure is fully repaid
by the condition in which the crop left
the ground for grass.
After this field has lain in grass two or
three years, it will probably be turned over
for another trial, and we will then speak of
it again. Louisville Journal.
Subsoil Plowing.
Before commencing spring work it will
be well to consider which lands should, and
which should not be subsoiled.
From the days of Jethro Tull until within
the last twenty-five or thirty years, the
farmers of England were content, in common
with those of other countries, to stir
the immediate surface of the soil, and were
not aware that a greater depth of disturbance
would produce a larger and better re-
sult. Indeed, it was generally believed that
the whole matter which went to fertilize
plants, belonged to the immediate surface,
or that portion known as loam—a name
given, until very recently, to the disturbed
portion only—which, by the combined influ-
ences of the sun, air, and decay of vegetation,
changes its color. The fact that the
components of the soil beneath these points
were all to be found as part of the integrants
of plants was scarcely known, and
still less so that they could not be absorbed
by them, and thus go to make up the struc-
ture, until acted on by a series of influences
caused by atmospheric contact and the
presence of humidity ; not the result of
stagnant water. Liebig first exposed the
true value of the inorganic substances of
the soil, or those parts which were not the
immediate result of plant decay ; and farm-
ers slowly yielded their long cherished be-
lief that the black portions of the soil
alone could make plants. These new doc-
rise to the use of a subsoil plow,
which, without elevating the subsoil to the
surface, disturbed it in places, and permit-
ted a free circulation of atmosphere between
its particles. The deep cuts made
by the plow also acted in degree as under-
drains, and permitted, under some special
conditions of surface—such as the slope
of hills, etc.—redundant water to pass
way. Air necessarily entered, and chemi-
cal changes occurred; the surface of the
particles of the subsoil were soon condi-
tioned so as to sustain roots, and the
passed into it to a greater depth than h:
been before known. These, in turn,
sorbed from the subsoil larger quantiti
of inorganic matter, rendered soluble
chemical changes consequent upon mois
ure and air. The constituents were take
into the plants above, and portions not
marketable as crops, decay in the upper
soil, adding to the greasy, unctuous, organic
matter new portions of inorganic food for
future crops. Plants had longer roots as
well as greater number of fibres, and larger
crops was the consequence. The decay of
these roots in the soil left tubes to great
depths; the atmosphere could come in
laden with gases, resulting from vegeta-
ble decomposition required by plants ; rains
and dews, which was the nitrogenous exha-
lations of all organic nature from the atmosphere,
descended into the subsoils, which
gradually changed color so as to make deep
loamy soils in localities where before only
sparse, shallow-rooted crops could be grown.
All this was heard of by the American farmer
long before he was awakened to action;
and even now, when every truly practical
farmer owns a subsoil plow, he can tell you
of some neighbor who cautioned him against
its use, and who insisted that the deep disturbance
of his soil would let all the manure
filter downward ; that, if that were
true, every well would be the receptacle of
the results of decay, every spring would be
a cesspool, and every rivulet but an organic
charnel-house. Nature, in the wisdom of
her laws, has rendered the carbon and
alumina of the soil, after proper exposure
to atmospheric influences, capable of receiving
and retailing all the results of de
cay ; and the value of a farm must depend
upon the depth to which its surface by dis
turbance is, rendered capable of performing
this peculiar function.
Thoroughly subsoil-plowed lands soon be