Now, as regards very wet meadows, it is found that they are seldom if ever manured; for, just as I was told as regards some of the low lands on the banks of the Yeo, in Somersetshire, that it did not pay to manure them; so one might easily imagine that where the land is full of water, and perhaps of moist humus, manure would not tend to the increase of good grass, though it might to that of thistles and buttercups.
Meadows that are sufficiently sound to yield tolerable hay are too much worked to this end, and are, we think, getting poorer. The Cheshire pastures offer a good example of the effects of greed in this matter. A century ago we feel sure its grass-producing powers were far beyond what they are now. Grass is gone in hay and bones and cheese, but for generations the farmer has gone on depasturing to make manure; but as it will be seen, on reflection, that cattle can only deposit as manure, matter which they have taken from the field and converted into manurial substance, they cannot add any new material: so then this method of restoration must fail at last. Another restoration employed in this county was that of using their salt as a top-dressing. This, as it killed all the coarse grass, and so converted it into manure, recovered the pasture, by, out of bad and rough grass, growing good ones; but this too would fail in time. Hay, the framework of growing cattle, and cheese, have gone on converting the phosphates and the bone matted of the soil into their substances, and it is now found that returning this in the shape of bones and superphosphates is rapidly effecting an improvement.
Hence, then, we would recommend less of greed in haymaking. Do not ripen the grasses too much before cutting. Don’t trust to grazing for restoring the phosphates and other ingredients of the hay, but bring them in the shape of manure.
Use heavy rollers in spring to smooth and consolidate the soil; replant the roots thrown out by worms; mat the turf more thoroughly together; and crush larger but useless plants.
There is, then, less difference between the cultivation of pasture and of arable land than would at first be thought.
Drainage, acts of husbandry, amelioration of soil by rubbish of all kinds where too tenacious, manuring them by farmyard dung, or, failing this, such artificial manures as bones, superphosphates, guano, nitrates, soot, &c.,—these are the sheet anchors in the improvement of our pastures; and by these we should realize the hope of making two blades of good grass grow where one did before.