Farm Gardening with Hints on Cheap Manuring: Quick Cash Crops and How to Grow ThemAnonymous
Science
Farm Gardening with Hints on Cheap Manuring: Quick Cash Crops and How to Grow Them
Anonymous
Vegetable gardening
The Cornell Station has announced that a pile of horse manure exposed
to the weather will lose half of its value in six months. The Kansas
Station reaches nearly the same conclusion about farmyard manure.
Manure stored under cover may lose from 14 to 30 per cent. of its
nitrogen (ammonia); and as this element is the most expensive of all
to buy, it is evident that the loss is a very serious one, and one
that should be avoided if possible.
=General Principles of Storage.=--Having pointed out the fact that on
many farms there is a loss of a large amount of excellent manure, it
is now in order to name a remedy. The compass of this book is so
limited that it is necessary to go straight to the point, omitting a
detailed account of the chemical processes involved.
The best-known method of keeping all the manure produced by farm
animals is storage under a closed shed, supplemented with chemical
preservatives. The shed need not cover the barnyard, but merely the
manure pile. The preservatives cost little money, and eventually go to
the soil in the form of excellent fertilizers. Not a cent paid for
them need be lost.
The manure shed should be large enough to work in with comfort; large
enough to permit the heap or heaps of manure to be turned, worked over
and shifted from place to place. A clay or earth floor will answer
every purpose, and the shed may be of the cheapest character, provided
it will turn the rain. The floor of the manure shed should slope
inward from all directions, and the drainage around the shed should be
outward, so that no rain-water or snow-water can enter.
In theory, it may be best to put fresh manure on the land as quickly
as possible. All leaching is then received by the soil, and little is
lost, except through the air.
In practice, this plan is not always a good one. It costs more to make
ten trips to the field than one trip, and valuable time is wasted. It
is quite out of the question to haul out manure every day or even
every week. Besides, it is necessary in actual practice, especially in
gardening or truck farming, to cover a whole piece of ground at one
time, so that it may be plowed and seeded for the coming crop. The
ground is usually available only a short time before this preparation,
having, perhaps, been occupied by something else. It is desirable,
moreover, that the manure when applied shall be ready for immediate
service as plant food, which is not the case with the raw product.
Fresh manure is but sparingly digestible by plant roots. Quicker cash
results will be secured by applying prepared manure to the soil than
by applying the product fresh from the stable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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