“And on those clay-spots,” said the Deacon, “you either get very good barley, or a crop not worth harvesting.”
“You have hit it exactly, Deacon,” said I. “The best barley I have this year (1878) is on these clay-spots. And the reason is, that we gave them an extra plowing last fall with a three-horse plow. That extra plowing has probably given me an extra 30 bushels of barley per acre. The barley on some of the lighter portions of the field will not yield over 25 bushels per acre. On the clay-spots, it looks now (June 13) as though there would be over 50 bushels per acre. It is all headed out handsomely on the clay-spots, and has a strong, dark, luxuriant appearance, while on the sand, the crop is later and has a yellow, sickly look.”
“You ought,” said the Doctor, “to have top-dressed these poor, sandy parts of the field with a little superphosphate and nitrate of soda.”
“It would have paid wonderfully well,” said I, “or, perhaps, more correctly speaking, the loss would have been considerably less. We have recently been advised by a distinguished writer, to apply manure to our best land, and let the poor land take care of itself. But where the poor land is in the same field with the good, we are obliged to plow, harrow, cultivate, sow, and harvest the poor spots, and the question is, whether we shall make them capable of producing a good crop by the application of manure, or be at all the labor and expense of putting in and harvesting a crop of chicken-feed and weeds. Artificial manures give us a grand chance to make our crops more uniform.”
“You are certainly right there,” said the Doctor, “but let us examine the Rothamsted experiments on barley.”
You will find the results in the following tables. The manures used, are in many respects the same as were adopted in the wheat experiments already given. The mineral or ash constituents were supplied as follows:
Potash—as sulphate of potash.
Soda—as sulphate of soda.
Magnesia—as sulphate of magnesia.
Lime—as sulphate, phosphate, and superphosphate.