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
The "pink clover" grown in Hyogo after rice, as a green manure crop,
yields under favorable conditions twenty tons of the green product
per acre, and is usually applied to about three times the area upon
which it grew, at the rate of 6.6 tons per acre, the stubble and
roots serving for the ground upon which the crop grew.
On July 3rd we left Osaka, going south through Sakai to Wakayama,
thence east and north to the Nara Experiment Station. After passing
the first two stations the route lay through a very flat, highly
cultivated garden section with cucumbers trained on trellises, many
squash in full bloom, with fields of taro, ginger and many other
vegetables. Beyond Hamadera considerable areas of flat sandy land
had been set close with pine, but with intervening areas in rice,
where the growers were using the revolving weeder seen in Fig. 14.
At Otsu broad areas are in rice but here worked with the short
handled claw weeders, and stubble from a former crop had been drawn
together into small piles, seen in Fig. 230, which later would be
carefully distributed and worked beneath the mud.
Much of the mountain lands in this region, growing pine, is owned by
private parties and the growth is cut at intervals of ten, twenty or
twenty-five years, being sold on the ground to those who will come
and cut it at a price of forty sen for a one-horse load, as already
described, page 159.
The course from here was up the rather rapidly rising Kiigawa valley
where much water was being applied to the rice fields by various
methods of pumping, among them numerous current wheels; an
occasional power-pump driven by cattle; and very commonly the
foot-power wheel where the man walks on the circumference, steadying
himself with a long pole, as seen in the field, Fig. 231. It was
here that a considerable section of the hill slope had been very
recently cut over, the area showing light in the engraving. It was
in the vicinity of Hashimoto on this route, too, that the two
beautiful views reproduced in Figs. 151 and 152 were taken.
At the experiment station it was learned that within the prefecture
of Nara, having a population of 558,314, and 107,574 acres of
cultivated land, two-thirds of this was in paddy rice. Within the
province there are also about one thousand irrigation reservoirs
with an average depth of eight feet. The rice fields receive 16.32
inches of irrigation water in addition to the rain.
Of the uncultivated hill lands, some 2500 acres contribute green
manure for fertilization of fields. Reference has been made to the
production of compost for fertilizers on page 211. The amount
recommended in this prefecture as a yearly application for two crops
grown is:
Organic matter 3,711 to 4,640 lbs. per acre
Nitrogen 105 to 131 lbs. per acre
Phosphorus 35 to 44 lbs. per acre
Potassium 56 to 70 lbs. per acre
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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