Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel

by Samuel W. Johnson

We have laid much stress on the amending qualities of peat, when applied to dry and leachy soils, which by its use are rendered more retentive of moisture and manure. These properties, which it would seem, are just adapted to renovate very light land, under certain circumstances, may become disadvantageous on heavier soils. On clays no application is needed to retain moisture. They are already too wet as a general thing.

Peat, when put into the soil, lasts much longer than stubble, or green crops plowed in, or than long manure. If buried too deeply, or put into a heavy soil, especially if in large quantity, it does not decay, but remains wet, and tends to make a bog of the field itself.

For soils that are rather heavy, it is therefore best to compost the peat with some rapidly fermenting manure. We thus get a compound which is quicker than muck, and slower than stable manure, etc., and is therefore better adapted to the wants of the soil than either of these would be alone.

Here it will be seen that much depends on the character of the peat itself. If light and spongy, and easily dried, it may be used alone with advantage on loamy soils, whereas if dense, and coherent, it would most likely be a poor amendment on a soil which has much tendency to become compact, and therefore does not readily free itself from excess of water.

But even a clay soil, if thorough-drained and deeply plowed, may be wonderfully improved by even a heavy dressing of muck, as then, the water being let off, the muck can exert no detrimental action; but operates as effectually to loosen a too heavy soil, as in case of sand, it makes an over-porous soil compact or retentive. A clay may be made friable, if well drained, by incorporating with it any substance as lime, sand, long manure or muck, which interposing between the clayey particles, prevents their adhering together.

II.—Noxious ingredients.

a. Vitriol peat. Occasionally a peat is met with which is injurious if applied in the fresh state to crops, from its containing some substance which exerts a poisonous action on vegetation. The principal detrimental ingredients that occur in peat, appear to be sulphate of protoxide of iron,—the same body that is popularly known under the names copperas and green-vitriol,—and sulphate of alumina, the astringent component of alum.

I have found these substances ready formed in large quantity in but one of the peats that I have examined, viz.: that sent me by Mr. Perrin Scarborough; of Brooklyn, Conn. This peat dissolved in water to the extent of 15 per cent., and the soluble portion, although containing some organic matter and sulphate of lime, consisted in great part of green-vitriol.

Portions of this muck, when thrown up to the air, become covered with "a white crust, having the taste of alum or saltpeter."

The bed containing this peat, though drained, yields but a little poor bog hay, and the peat itself, even after weathering for a year, when applied, mixed with one-fifth of stable manure to corn in the hill, gave no encouraging results, though a fair crop was obtained. It is probable that the sample analyzed was much richer in salts of iron and alumina, than the average of the muck.