Extensive use of Guano by a Delaware farmer. Maj. Jones, whose name is extensively known as a very enterprising farmer, purchased in the summer of 1851, of Messrs. A.B. Allen & Co. New York, sixty tons of Peruvian guano, for his own use. With this he dressed 300 acres of wheat, upon the farm at his residence on the Bohemia manor; plowing in part of it and putting in part of it by a drilling machine at the rate of 200 lbs. to the acre, sowing the wheat all in drills. Part of the ground was clover, part corn, and perhaps one half wheat and oat stubble. The earth at the time of sowing was so dry, doubts were entertained whether it would ever vegetate; and that and other causes extended the work so late, upon a portion of the ground, there was scarcely any appearance of greenness when it froze up. With all these disadvantages, the crop was estimated at harvest at twenty bushels to the acre. Without guano no one acquainted with the farm would have estimated the crop at an average of ten bushels. This gives an undoubted increase of five bushels for each hundred weight of guano; and as the soil contains a good deal of clay with which the guano was well mixed, it will retain much of the value of the application, for the next crop. Maj. Jones has heretofore derived very great benefits from the use of guano, as might safely be adjudged from the fact of his risking $3,000 in one purchase of the same article.
Lasting effects of Guano.—Maj. Jones is well satisfied upon this point. In 1847, he used 16 tons, half Peruvian and half Patagonian, sowed with a lime-spreading machine and plowed in deep, say eight inches on clayey loam—planted corn and made 60 bushels per acre on 100 acres; which was an increase of 12 bushels per acre over any former year. Next spring the weeds grew as high as his head on horseback. Rolled them down and plowed under and sowed wheat, five pecks to the acre, and made a heavier crop than ever before made on same land, which he attributes entirely to the guano. Thinks the third crop of wheat is benefitted from guano plowed in three years previous.
The extent to which guano is used in the State of Delaware may be inferred from the fact that it is not at all unusual for merchants in small country villages to purchase from 50 to 200 tons at a time for their retail trade.
Among other successful users of guano in that State, we may mention Governor Ross, who, if as good a ruler as he is farmer, ought to be continued in office to the end of life.
The soil to which guano has been mostly applied in this State is a sandy loam, and the process of applying it, by sowing broadcast from 200 to 350 lbs. per acre, and plowing in from four to six inches deep, previous to sowing wheat, which is always followed by clover, by every one who understands his own true interest; for wherever that course has been pursued, there has been a certain profit derived from the application, even when the wheat has failed.
The improvements in farming in Delaware within the last ten years, will probably exceed in proportion to acres and people, any other State in the Union. Nearly all the northern part of the State has been whitened with lime, and the southern part is rapidly following the same path; while the sale of guano in all parts will exceed any other section of the country, if not in quantity, certainly in numbers of persons making use of this sure means of restoring the lands of an almost ruined State, to their pristine fertility.
GUANO IN PENSYLVANIA.
There has probably been less guano used in this great State, than in her little sister, of which we have just been speaking. This may be owing to the fact that great improvements have been made by the use of lime, and that Pensylvania farmers generally are not much inclined to leave the path their fathers trod before them; or that they are skeptical as to what they hear of the miraculous powers of guano; hence, its use has been in a great measure confined to market gardeners, or experiments in a small way; the sales at Philadelphia, for home consumption, so far as we have noticed, are mostly in small lots of one to ten bags. Among all with whom we have conversed, however, who have used Peruvian guano in that State, we have never heard a doubt expressed of its value, though the idea, strangely enough seems to prevail, that it will only be profitable for gardners and small farmers, and that it is of no benefit to succeeding crops. No doubt the progress of improvement by the use of guano in that vicinity has been greatly retarded, in consequence of the sale of considerable quantities of "cheap guano," which however low in the scale of prices, is still lower in the scale of values. In fact, there is but one thing connected with the spurious stuff, lower in any scale, and that is the honesty of those who manufacture or knowingly sell such a villainous compound to farmers, who are utterly ignorant upon the subject, under solemn assurances, that it "is equal to any guano in market, and only a little more than half price."
Mr. Landreth, the celebrated seedsman of Philadelphia, applied $500 worth of Peruvian guano last spring, principally on the bean crop—he thinks guano admirably adapted to all the Brassica tribe, including turnips, cabbages, rutubaga, radishes and all cruciform plants. Upon a lawn which appeared to be running out, he applied guano, and the grass is now green and vigorous. The character of his soil may be judged from its location; it is on the Delaware river above Bristol, and had been awfully skinned before he came in possession. Now, with a liberal expenditure for manures, he gets two crops a year.