In what quantities should salt be applied to composts? To asparagus?
Soda, the requirement of which is occasioned by the same causes as create a deficiency of potash, and all of the other ingredients of vegetable ashes, may be very readily supplied by the use of common salt (chloride of sodium), which consists of about one half sodium (the base of soda). The best way to use salt is in the lime and salt mixture, previously described, or as a direct application to the soil. If too much salt be given to the soil it will kill any plant. In small quantities, however, it is highly beneficial, and if six bushels per acre be sown broadcast over the land, to be carried in by rains and dews, it will not only destroy many insects (grubs, worms, etc.), but will, after decomposing and becoming chlorine and soda, prove an excellent manure. Salt, even in quantities large enough to denude the soil of all vegetation, is never permanently injurious. After the first year, it becomes resolved into its constituents, and furnishes chlorine and soda to plants, without injuring them. One bushel of salt in each cord of compost will not only hasten the decomposition of the manures, but will kill all seeds and grubs—a very desirable effect. While small quantities of salt in a compost heap are beneficial, too much (as when applied to the soil) is positively injurious, as it arrests decomposition; fairly pickles the manures, and prevents them from rotting.
What is generally the best way to use salt?
What is nitrate of soda?
What plants contain lime?
For asparagus, which is a marine plant, salt is an excellent manure, and may be applied in almost unlimited quantities, while the plants are growing, if used after they have gone to top, it is injurious. Salt has been applied to asparagus beds in such quantities as to completely cover them, and with apparent benefit to the plants. Of course large doses of salt kill all weeds, and thus save labor and the injury to the asparagus roots, which would result from their removal by hoeing. Salt may be used advantageously in any of the foregoing manners, but should always be applied with care. For ordinary farm purposes, it is undoubtedly most profitable to use the salt with lime, and make it perform the double duty of assisting in the decomposition of vegetable matter, and fertilizing the soil.
Soda unites with the silica in the soil, and forms the valuable silicate of soda.
Nitrate of soda, or cubical nitre, which is found in South America, consists of soda and nitric acid. It furnishes both soda and nitrogen to plants, and is an excellent manure.
LIME.
The subject of lime is one of most vital importance to the farmer; indeed, so varied are its modes of action and its effects, that some writers have given it credit for every thing good in the way of farming, and have gone so far as to say that all permanent improvement of agriculture must depend on the use of lime. Although this is far in excess of the truth (as lime cannot plow, nor drain, nor supply any thing but lime to the soil), its many beneficial effects demand for it the closest attention.