HOW TO GET LARGER CROPS.
“I am tired of so much talk about plant-food,” said the Deacon; “what we want to know is how to make our land produce larger crops of wheat, corn, oats, barley, potatoes, clover, and grass.”
This is precisely what I am trying to show. On my own farm, the three leading objects are (1) to get the land drained, (2) to make it clean and mellow, and (3) to get available nitrogen for the cereal crops. After the first two objects are accomplished, the measure of productiveness will be determined by the amount of available nitrogen in the soil. How to get available nitrogen, therefore, is my chief and ultimate object in all the operations on the farm, and it is here that science can help me. I know how to get nitrogen, but I want to get it in the cheapest way, and then to be sure that I do not waste it.
There is one fact fully established by repeated experiment and general experience—that 80 lbs. of available nitrogen per acre, applied in manure, will almost invariably give us a greatly increased yield of grain crops. I should expect, on my farm, that on land which, without manure, would give me 15 bushels of wheat per acre, such a dressing of manure would give me, in a favorable season, 35 or 40 bushels per acre, with a proportional increase of straw; and, in addition to this, there would be considerable nitrogen left for the following crop of clover. Is it not worth while making an earnest effort to get this 80 lbs. of available nitrogen?
I have on my farm many acres of low, mucky land, bordering on the creek, that probably contain several thousand pounds of nitrogen per acre. So long as the land is surcharged with water, this nitrogen, and other plant-food, lies dormant. But drain it, and let in the air, and the oxygen decomposes the organic matter, and ammonia and nitric acid are produced. In other words, we get available nitrogen and other plant-food, and the land becomes capable of producing large crops of corn and grass; and the crops obtained from this low, rich land, will make manure for the poorer, upland portions of the farm.
[ CHAPTER V.]
SWAMP-MUCK OR PEAT AS MANURE.
“It would pay you,” said the Deacon, “to draw out 200 or 300 loads of muck from the swamp every year, and compost it with your manure.”
This may or may not be the case. It depends on the composition of the muck, and how much labor it takes to handle it.