Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel

by Samuel W. Johnson

Instead of using the above mentioned substances singly, any or all of them may be employed together.

The muck should be as fine and free from lumps as possible, and must be intimately mixed with the other ingredients by shoveling over. The mass is then thrown up into a compact heap, which may be four feet high. When the heap is formed, it is well to pour on as much water as the mass will absorb, (this may be omitted if the muck is already quite moist,) and finally the whole is covered over with a few inches of pure muck, so as to retain moisture and heat. If the heap is put up in the Spring, it may stand undisturbed for one or two months, when it is well to shovel it over and mix it thoroughly. It should then be built up again, covered with fresh muck, and allowed to stand as before until thoroughly decomposed. The time required for this purpose varies with the kind of muck, and the quality of the other material used. The weather and thoroughness of intermixture of the ingredients also materially affect the rapidity of decomposition. In all cases five or six months of summer weather is a sufficient time to fit these composts for application to the soil.

Mr. Stanwood of Colebrook, Conn., says: "I have found a compost made of two bushels of unleached ashes to twenty-five of muck, superior to stable manure as a top-dressing for grass, on a warm, dry soil."

N. Hart, Jr., of West Cornwall, Conn., states: "I have mixed 25 bushels of ashes with the same number of loads of muck, and applied it to ¾ of an acre. The result was far beyond that obtained by applying 300 lbs. best guano to the same piece."

The use of "salt and lime mixture" is so strongly recommended, that a few words may be devoted to its consideration.

When quick-lime is slaked with a brine of common salt (chloride of sodium), there are formed by double decomposition, small portions of caustic soda and chloride of calcium, which dissolve in the liquid. If the solution stand awhile, carbonic acid is absorbed from the air, forming carbonate of soda: but carbonate of soda and chloride of calcium instantly exchange their ingredients, forming insoluble carbonate of lime and reproducing common salt.

When the fresh mixture of quick-lime and salt is incorporated with any porous body, as soil or peat, then, as Graham has shown, unequal diffusion of the caustic soda and chloride of calcium occurs from the point where they are formed, through the moist porous mass, and the result is, that the small portion of caustic soda which diffuses most rapidly, or the carbonate of soda formed by its speedy union with carbonic acid, is removed from contact with the chloride of calcium.

Soda and carbonate of soda are more soluble in water and more strongly alkaline than lime. They, therefore, act on peat more energetically than the latter. It is on account of the formation of soda and carbonate of soda from the lime and salt mixture, that this mixture exerts a more powerful decomposing action than lime alone. Where salt is cheap and wood ashes scarce, the mixture may be employed accordingly to advantage. Of its usefulness we have the testimony of practical men.

Says Mr. F. Holbrook of Vermont, (Patent Office Report for 1856, page 193.) "I had a heap of seventy-five half cords of muck mixed with lime in the proportion of a half cord of muck to a bushel of lime. The muck was drawn to the field when wanted in August. A bushel of salt to six bushels of lime was dissolved in water enough to slake the lime down to a fine dry powder, the lime being slaked no faster than wanted, and spread immediately while warm, over the layers of muck, which were about six inches thick; then a coating of lime and so on, until the heap reached the height of five feet, a convenient width, and length enough to embrace the whole quantity of the muck. In about three weeks a powerful decomposition was apparent, and the heap was nicely overhauled, nothing more being done to it till it was loaded the next Spring for spreading. The compost was spread on the plowed surface of a dry sandy loam at the rate of about fifteen cords to the acre, and harrowed in. The land was planted with corn and the crop was more than sixty bushels to the acre."

Other writers assert that they "have decomposed with this mixture, spent tan, saw dust, corn stalks, swamp muck, leaves from the woods, indeed every variety of inert substance, and in much shorter time than it could be done by any other means." (Working Farmer, Vol. III. p. 280.)