The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
History
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
send me, and having tried all hold fast that which is good. Mr. Randolph
is peculiarly happy in having the barleys committed to him, as he had been
desirous of going considerably into that culture. I was able at the same
time to put into his hands Siberian barley, sent me from France. I look
forward with considerable anxiety to the success of the winter vetch, for
it gives us a good winter crop, and helps the succeeding summer one. It
is something like doubling the produce of the field. I know it does well
in Italy, and therefore have the more hope here. My experience leaves me
no fear as to the success of clover. I have never seen finer than in some
of my fields which have never been manured. My rotation is triennial; to
wit, one year of wheat and two of clover in the stronger fields, or two of
peas in the weaker, with a crop of Indian corn and potatoes between every
other rotation, that is to say once in seven years. Under this easy course
of culture, aided with some manure, I hope my fields will recover their
pristine fertility, which had in some of them been completely exhausted
by perpetual crops of Indian corn and wheat alternately. The atmosphere
is certainly the great workshop of nature for elaborating the fertilizing
principles and insinuating them into the soil. It has been relied on
as the sole means of regenerating our soil by most of the land-holders
in the canton I inhabit, and where rest has been resorted to before a
total exhaustion, the soil has never failed to recover. If, indeed, it
be so run down as to be incapable of throwing weeds or herbage of any
kind, to shade the soil from the sun, it either goes off in gullies, and
is entirely lost, or remains exhausted till a growth springs up of such
trees as will rise in the poorest soils. Under the shade of these and the
cover soon formed of their deciduous leaves, and a commencing herbage,
such fields sometimes recover in a long course of years; but this is too
long to be taken into a course of husbandry. Not so however is the term
within which the atmosphere alone will reintegrate a soil rested in due
season. A year of wheat will be balanced by one, two, or three years of
rest and atmospheric influence, according to the quality of the soil. It
has been said that no rotation of crops will keep the earth in the same
degree of fertility without the aid of manure. But it is well known here
that a space of rest greater or less in spontaneous herbage, will restore
the exhaustion of a single crop. This then is a rotation; and as it is
not to be believed that spontaneous herbage is the only or best covering
during rest, so may we expect that a substitute for it may be found which
will yield profitable crops. Such perhaps are clover, peas, vetches, &c.
A rotation then may be found, which by giving time for the slow influence
of the atmosphere, will keep the soil in a constant and equal state of
fertility. But the advantage of manuring, is that it will do more in one
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