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
A few fields were still bearing their crop of soy beans planted in
February between rows of grain, and the green herbage was being
worked into the flooded soil, for the crop of rice. Much compost,
brought to the fields, was stacked with layers of straw between,
laid straight, the alternate courses at right angles, holding the
piles in rectangular form with vertical sides, some of which were
four to six feet high and the layers of compost about six inches
thick.
Just before reaching Tanjiro, a region is passed where orchards of
the candleberry tree occupy high leveled areas between rice paddies,
after the manner described for the mulberry orchards in Chekiang,
China. These trees, when seen from a distance, have quite the
appearance of our apple orchards.
At the Fukuoka Experiment Station we learned that the usual depth of
plowing for the rice fields is three and a half to four and a half
inches, but that deeper plowing gives somewhat larger yields. As an
average of five years trials, a depth of seven to eight inches
increased the yield from seven to ten per cent over that of the
usual depth. In this prefecture grass from the bordering hill lands
is applied to the rice fields at rates ranging from 3300 to 16,520
pounds green weight per acre, and, according to analyses given,
these amounts would carry to, the fields from 18 to 90 pounds of
nitrogen; 12.4 to 63.2 pounds of potassium, and 2.1 to 10.6 pounds
of phosphorus per acre.
Where bean cake is used as a fertilizer the applications may be at
the rate of 496 pounds per acre, carrying 33.7 pounds of nitrogen,
nearly 5 pounds of phosphorus and 7.4 pounds of potassium. The earth
composts are chiefly applied to the dry land fields and then only
after they are well rotted, the fermentation being carried through
at least sixty days, during which the material is turned three times
for aeration, the work being done at the home. When used on the rice
fields where water is abundant the composts are applied in a less
fermented condition.
The best yields of rice in this prefecture are some eighty bushels
per acre, and crops of barley may even exceed this, the two crops
being grown the same year, the rice following the barley. In most
parts of Japan the grain food of the laboring people is about 70 per
cent naked barley mixed with 30 per cent of rice, both cooked and
used in the same manner. The barley has a lower market value and its
use permits a larger share of the rice to be sold as a money crop.
The soils are fertilized for each crop every year and the
prescription for barley and rice recommended by the Experiment
Station, for growers in this prefecture, is indicated by the
following table:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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