A judicious rotation, or round of crops, has long been considered, in England, essential to good husbandry: and so it is by skilful farmers in our own country; particularly in the middle States, where clover, so highly important in the rotation, has, for more than thirty years, been rendered wonderfully productive, by the application of plaster of Paris. The most usual course in England has been (excepting on stiff clayey soils) first year turnips, manured and kept clean by hoeing; the second year barley, with clover seed; the third year the clover mown for hay; and its second crop, at wheat seed time, ploughed in, and, where necessary to fill the seams, the ground harrowed, the wheat sown, and then harrowed in. This is called "wheat upon a clover lay."—But by the long and frequent repetition of clover, (that is, once in four years) in their rotations, lands in England became (as they express it) "sick of clover:" and I have been informed that some lands in our middle States, long subjected to the like application of clover, exhibit like symptoms of disease or failure. But Mr. Arbuthnot introduced clover once in three years, without suffering by such more frequent repetition. "He attributed the failure of this plant to shallow and ill-executed ploughing; the result (says Mr. Young) justified his opinion."
Mr. Young mentions a lecture he had read to the Board of Agriculture, "on the means by which a farm can be made, by a right proportion of all the products, to support itself, without foreign assistance, in a state of high fertility, a question depending on the quantity or weight of dung resulting from the consumption in litter of a given weight of straw." This lecture I have not seen. But he considers the question as successfully decided, in Mr. Arbuthnot's practice, in the following manner; 134 sheep and 30 lambs were turnip fed, in a pen on a headland, well littered with straw: in six weeks they required nearly six tons of straw [to give them clean and comfortable beds:] and in that time made 40 tons of dung, equal to that brought from London [stable dung it is to be presumed.] So every ton of litter produced near seven tons of dung.—But this weight must have been obtained chiefly by the earth of the headland absorbing the urine, of which, when fed on turnips, sheep make great quantities, and being finally mixed with their dung and litter. This recital reminds me of the recommendation, in my address to this Society, in May, 1818, to carry earth into the barn yard, once in every two weeks, from spring to autumn; adding to every layer of earth a coat of litter. I should then have advised a plentiful spreading of litter, had I not known that our courses of husbandry in Essex yielded very little straw.
In the same communication to the Society, I presented my ideas on the proper application of manure; to wit, always to bury it up quickly, when carried to the field, to prevent great loss by its exposure to the sun and air; remarking, that the essence of manure was lost, not by sinking into the earth below the roots of cultivated plants, but by rising into the atmosphere, and so fleeing away. Here, also, I have the satisfaction of seeing the theory I had formed nineteen years ago (in the manner suggested in that communication) supported by the opinions and practices of such eminent agriculturists as Messrs. Arbuthnot and Ducket. After noticing Arbuthnot's cultivation of madder, an article requiring a rich soil and extremely deep tillage, Mr. Young says, "there was one circumstance in his management, which, being applicable to more important articles, merits a more durable attention; this is, the depth to which he ploughed in the dung: his tillage went to that of eighteen inches; and he conceived there was no danger of losing, by this circumstance, either vegetable or animal manures, as their tendency, contrary to all fossil ones, was not to sink, but to rise in the atmosphere." Fossil manures are lime, marl, plaster of Paris, and other substances dug out of the earth, which increase the productive powers of soils.
Mr. Ducket's manner of applying dung, although his was a sand farm, was similar to Mr. Arbuthnot's.—"Immediately connected with the depth of tillage, is that to which dung may be safely deposited. He [Mr. Ducket] had not the least apprehension of losing it by deep ploughing; but freely turned it down to two or three times the depth common among his neighbours." Yet Mr. Young says, that farmers (and good farmers too) persist in a contrary practice. But he adds, "Enlightened individuals, thinly scattered, know better: having convinced themselves that Mr. Ducket's practice is not only safe but beneficial;" and then names one who "ploughs in his dung as deeply as his ploughs can go, turning it in nine inches, and would bury it twelve, did he stir to such a depth."
Confirmatory of the correctness of the practice of these two celebrated English farmers, is the fact stated by Mr. John Sinclair, President of the British Board of Agriculture, in his account of the Improved Scottish Husbandry. He mentions one farmer who ridged his carrot ground, and buried the manure sixteen or seventeen inches deep, the ridges thirty inches wide. This farmer preferred, as a manure, a well prepared compost of peat-moss[13] and dung, ten tons, or double cart-loads, per English acre. "The dung (or compost) being at the bottom, makes the tap root of the carrot push immediately down, and swell to an enormous size; the roots being often sixteen inches in girt, and 18 or twenty inches in length."
To return to Mr. Ducket. His deep ploughing (says Mr. Young) was not practised above once in two or three years, and the successive tillage shallow. "By such deep ploughing, seldom given, Mr. Ducket conceived that a due degree of moisture was preserved in his light land, by means of which his crops were flourishing in seasons of drought which destroyed those of his neighbours: and no one could more severely condemn the ideas which governed the Norfolk farmers, in leaving what they called their pan unbroken at the depth only of 4 or 5 inches.—The operation of ploughing he thought could scarcely be given too seldom, provided when given it was done effectively: and he always carried this paucity of tillage as far as circumstances would permit: thus I have known him put in seven crops with only four ploughings." In another part of his lecture, Mr. Young says, "If I were to name the circumstance which more than any other governed his (Mr. Ducket's) practice, I should say that the whole was founded in trench ploughing; and that the principle which governed this practice (a principle thoroughly impressed upon his mind, as well as on the minds of those who draw intelligent conclusions) was that of giving as little tillage as possible to sandy soils."
"The next circumstance which I shall advert to (says Mr. Young) in the husbandry of Mr. Ducket, is the use of long, fresh dung, instead of that which in common management is turned and mixed till it becomes rotten: and in justice to his memory, I shall read the short recital of his practice, as I printed it three-and-twenty years ago. "Dependent on the Trench-Plough,[14] is Mr. Ducket's system of dunging. He conceives, and I apprehend very justly, that the more dunghills are stirred and turned over, and rotted, the more of their virtue is lost. It is not a question of straw merely wetted; but good long dung he esteems more than that quantity of short dung, which time will convert the former to. Two loads of long may become one of short; but the two are much more valuable than the one. Without the Trenching-plough, however, his opinion would be different. If long dung is ploughed in, in the common manner, with lumps and bundles sticking out at many places along every furrow, which lets the sun and air into the rest that seems covered, he thinks, so used, it is mostly lost, or given to the winds: in such a case, short rotted manure will be better covered, and should be preferred. But with his plough nothing of this happens; and it enables him to use his dung in such a state as gives him a large quantity instead of a small one. The good sense of these observations must be obvious at the first blush." Mr. Young adds—"The use of FRESH instead of ROTTEN dung, is, in my opinion, one of the greatest agricultural discoveries that has been made in the present age." He then states a striking experiment made by himself—67 small cart loads of fresh yard dung produced two successive crops of potatoes, yielding together 742 bushels; at the same time, the same quantity of yard dung, after 6 months rotting, yielded 708 bushels, leaving [to the fresh long dung] a superiority of 34 bushels. But had the fresh dung been kept as long as the other, it would have required at least twice, perhaps thrice as much, to have produced the quantity used." [That is, twice or three times 67 loads of fresh long dung, if kept and often turned and mixed to produce fermentation and rotting, would have shrunk, or been reduced, to 67 loads of short rotten dung.] "If the crops therefore had been only equal, still the advantage [of the fresh dung] would have been most decisive."
"I shall not quit (says Mr. Young) the husbandry of two men who carried tillage, on soils so extremely different, to its utmost perfection, without remarking the circumstances in which they agreed. Both were equal friends to deep ploughing; both rejected the common repetition of tillage, and reduced the number of their operations to a degree that merits attention; both rejected fallows; and both ploughed deeply for depositing manure, without any apprehension of losing it. These are very important points in Practical Agriculture."
To this account of the successful practices of these two celebrated English farmers, it may be useful to subjoin a few observations. I have thought it proper so far to present them in detail, in order to develope principles; not expecting a precise adoption of their practices; which indeed, without their or similar superior ploughs and other implements, would be impracticable: but with such instruments as we possess, or may easily obtain, we can materially increase the depth of our ploughing, and I hope contrive effectually to cover our manure. This should be wholly applied to Tillage Crops; for which the manuring should be so ample as to ensure a succession of good crops through the whole rotation, without the aid of any additional manure, especially for wheat, rye, barley or oats: for besides increasing the seeds of weeds (with which all our lands are too much infested) such additional manuring, immediately applied to the small grain crops, renders them more liable to injury from mildews. Of this I am fully satisfied, as well from numerous statements of facts which I have seen in books of husbandry, as from the circumstances under which remarkable mildews have otherwise been noticed. One of our countrymen, who wrote a short essay on the subject prior to the American Revolution, has given the only solution of the causes of mildews that has ever appeared satisfactory to me: perhaps at some future time I may find leisure to show the correspondence of facts with his principles.[15]