Loading your reading…

Talks on Manures: A Series of Familiar and Practical Talks Between the Author and the Deacon, the Doctor, and Other Neighbors, on the Whole SubjectHarris, Joseph

Science

Talks on Manures: A Series of Familiar and Practical Talks Between the Author and the Deacon, the Doctor, and Other Neighbors, on the Whole Subject

Name: Talks on Manures: A Series of Familiar and Practical Talks Between the Author and the Deacon, the Doctor, and Other Neighbors, on the Whole Subject
Author: Harris, Joseph

Harris, Joseph

Fertilizers; Manures

Retained on the farm.
  15 acres corn, @ 80 bushels per acre                    33½ tons.
  Corn stalks from do.                                    40   ”
   5 acres barley straw                                    8   ”
  10   ”   oats and peas, equal 80 bushels of oats        12¾  ”
  Straw from do.                                          20   ”
  15 acres wheat-straw                                    25   ”
  15   ”   clover-hay                                     25   ”
  Clover-seed straw                                       10   ”
  15 acres pasture and meadow, equal 40 tons hay          40   ”
   5   ”   mustard, equal 10 tons hay                     10   ”
   5   ”   rape, equal 10 tons hay                        10   ”
   5   ”   mangels, 25 tons per acre,                     15   ”
               equal to 3 tons dry
  Leaves from do.                                          3   ”
                                                         -------
          Total retained on the farm                     252¼ tons.

It would take a good many years to exhaust any ordinary soil by such a
course of cropping. Except, perhaps, the sandy knolls, I think there is
not an acre on my farm that would be exhausted in ten thousand years,
and as some portions of the low alluvial soil will grow crops without
manure, there will be an opportunity to give the poor, sandy knolls more
than their share of plant-food. In this way, notwithstanding the fact
that we sell produce and bring nothing back, I believe the whole farm
will gradually increase in productiveness. The plant-food annually
rendered available from the decomposition and disintegration of the
inert organic and mineral matter in the soil, will be more than equal to
that exported from the farm. If the soil becomes deficient in anything,
it is likely that it will be in phosphates, and a little superphosphate
or bone-dust might at any rate be profitably used on the rape, mustard,
and turnips.

The point in good farming is to develop from the latent stores in the
soil, and to accumulate enough available plant-food for the production
of the largest possible yield of those crops which we sell. In other
words, we want enough available plant-food in the soil to grow 40
bushels of wheat and 50 bushels of barley. I think the farmer who raises
10 tons for every ton he sells, will soon reach this point, and when
once reached, it is a comparatively easy matter to maintain this degree
of fertility.


WHY OUR CROPS ARE SO POOR.

“If the soil is so rich in plant-food,” said the Deacon, “I again ask,
why are our crops so poor?”

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Talks on Manures: A Series of Familiar and Practical Talks Between the Author and the Deacon, the Doctor, and Other Neighbors, on the Whole Subject

No reviews yet