Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
This compost house is designed to serve two and a half acres. Its
floor is twelve by eighteen feet, rendered watertight by a mixture
of clay, lime and sand. The walls are of earth, one foot thick, and
the roof is thatched with straw. Its capacity is sixteen to twenty
tons, having a cash value of 60 yen, or $30. In preparing the stack,
materials are brought daily and, spread over one side of the compost
floor until the pile has attained a height of five feet. After one
foot in depth has been laid and firmed, 1.2 inches of soil or mud is
spread over the surface and the process repeated until full height
has been attained. Water is added sufficient to keep the whole
saturated and to maintain the temperature below that of the body.
After the compost stacks have been completed they are permitted to
stand five weeks in summer, seven weeks in winter, when they are
forked over and transferred to the opposite side of the house.
If we state in round numbers the total nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium thus far enumerated which Japanese farmers apply or return
annually to their twenty or twenty-one thousand square miles of
cultivated fields, the case stands 385,214 tons of nitrogen, 91,656
tons of phosphorus and 255,778 tons of potassium. These values are
only approximations and do not include the large volume and variety
of fertilizers prepared from fish, which have long been used.
Neither do they include the very large amount of nitrogen derived
directly from the atmosphere through their long, extensive and
persistent cultivation of soy beans and other legumes. Indeed, from
1903 to 1906 the average area of paddy field upon which was grown a
second crop of green manure in the form of some legume was 6.8 per
cent of the total area of such fields aggregating 11,000 square
miles. In 1906 over 18 per cent of the upland fields also produced
some leguminous crop, these fields aggregating between 9,000 and
10,000 square miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account