Part 5

The editor of the Farmer in answer to an inquiry whether a combination of charcoal, plaster, and guano would make a profitable top dressing in spring for wheat, says, "yes"--but thinks if it had been plowed in with the seed in the fall, the result would have been much better. However, says he, "we entertain not the slightest doubt, that, if his wheat field be top dressed with the mixture next spring, it will greatly increase the yield of his wheat crop, unless the season should prove a very dry one, as the charcoal, and plaster, will each tend to prevent the escape of the ammoniacal gases of the guano, and as it were, offer them up as food to the wheat plants.

"In April 1845, I applied 350 lbs. of guano to an acre of growing wheat, the land being entirely unimproved and very poor. Of course it was applied as a top-dressing, mixed, however, with plaster. The wheat was doubled in quantity at least; fine clover succeeded it; and in two crops, one of corn, and the other of small grain, last year and the present, the effects are still apparent."

If our correspondent would mix, in the proportion of 200 lbs. of guano, one bushel of charcoal, and half a bushel of plaster per acre, and sow the mixture on his wheat field next spring, after the frost is entirely out of the ground, then seed each acre with clover seed, and roll his land, we have no doubt that his wheat crop would be increased five or six bushels to the acre, perhaps more, and that he would have a good stand of clover plants, and a luxuriant crop of the latter next year.

"Our opinion is, that guanoed land should always be sowed to clover, or clover and orchard grass."

In this, particularly the opinion of the last paragraph, we fully concur--to obtain the full value of guano it must either be mixed with plaster or charcoal, or what is better, plowed in and thoroughly incorporated with the soil, and the land always sown with clover, peas or some other plant of equal value for green manure. It is true Col. Carter has been successful with wheat after wheat; while many continue successful, by carefully retaining all the straw; the guano being sufficient to keep up the everlasting ability of the soil to produce an annual crop of grain.

THE FIVE FIELD SYSTEM AND GUANO.

We look upon this as the most preferable of all other systems of farming ever adopted in the South--it is the system of Edmund Ruffin, to whom Virginia owes a debt of gratitude beyond her power to pay. It will be seen from the following extract from a letter of Mr. Newton that that eminent agriculturist is of opinion that improvement of poor land is unlimited, if guano in connection with this system is perseveringly applied. He says--"The "five field System," which is now rapidly extending over all the poor and worn lands that are now under improvement by marl, lime, or guano, originated, or at least was first extensively introduced in lower Virginia, on the Pamunkey, and has there wrought wonders, aided by marl and judicious farming. The rotation is corn,--wheat,--clover--wheat, or clover fallow,--and pasture, and after pasture one year, commencing the round again with corn. This system, if guano be applied to both crops of wheat, on corn land and fallow, or alternately with lime or marl, when calcareous manures are required, will readily increase the crops and permanent improvement of the land. In the commencement of the rotation, lime had better be applied with the putrescent manures to the corn crop, to be followed by guano on wheat. If this system be perseveringly, pursued, I can scarcely see any reasonable limits to the improvement of poor lands and the increase of the profits of agriculture."

Disappointment will result from the application of lime, marl, salt potash, guano, or any special and highly concentrated substance as a fertilizer, to the neglect of organic manures. We lay down this fact as incontrovertible, that no soil, however fertile it may be made for the time being by any of these special manures, can remain permanently so, unless care is used to maintain a healthful supply of organic matter,--rich mould--good soil upon the land cultivated. If this is done, we never shall hear of guano failing to bring increased crops or of the "land running out," where it has been applied. Special manures of any kind may fail to produce crops, where this essential requisite to good farming is neglected. Guano, in our opinion, should always be followed by crops of clover, grass, peas, or some crop that will shade the earth, and can be turned under with the plow, to keep up the necessary supply of nitrogenous food for cereal crops.

The effect of Lime and Salt upon land is to dissolve the inert portions of organic matters in the soil, so that plants can suck up their substance into their own composition. Both are highly beneficial, but insufficient to add permanent fertility.

The effect of guano, is greater than any other highly concentrated manure ever discovered and applied to any soil. Its benefits are immediate continuous, and unlike lime, without exhausting the soil of its organic matter. Yet its benefits will be increased by the addition of organic manures derived from green crops, straw, or the stable, and the value of these will be greatly increased by the addition of lime, salt and plaster, while any deficiency of phosphates must be supplied by powdered bones or another application of guano.

The effect of plaster with guano is to arrest the excursive disposition of the volatile parts of the guano, and imprison them in the earth until called forth by the growing plants to do the State some service. The following question to the Editor of the American Farmer, and his reply, are to the point in this matter:--

A correspondent says--"As to the question of mixing plaster with guano, there is one question I should like to propose to the editor, viz.--'what will be the effect of sowing guano upon land by itself, and then, the seed being in the ground, giving it a heavy top-dressing of plaster, so as to arrest the 'excursion,' of which so much is said?"

Reply by the editor.--"The effect of such application of guano and plaster would be, to prevent the waste of the ammonia of the former, as every rain would decompose more or less of the plaster, separate the sulphuric acid from the lime, and the sulphuric acid when liberated, would unite with the ammonia, form a sulphate of ammonia, and hold the latter in reserve to be taken up by the roots of the plants. The presence of plaster with all organic manures, either directly mixed with them, or broadcasted after they may be applied, tends to prevent the escape of their volatile parts. We prefer them together for two reasons,--first, because, by bringing the two into immediate contact, the action of the plaster is more direct; and secondly, because the time and expense of one sowing is thereby saved. We go for saving every way, as time and labor costs money, and we look upon economy as a virtue, which should be practised by all, and especially by husbandmen."

If the plaster and guano is mixed together, 25 lbs. of the former to 100 lbs. of the latter, will be found a proper proportion, and sufficient to prevent the ammonia from making an "excursion." Unless the soil be very poor, 200 lbs. of good Peruvian guano is as much as we should recommend for wheat. In this we have the concurrence of the editor of the Farmer, and perhaps a hundred gentlemen whom we have conversed with upon this subject. All agree in the opinion, whether mixed with plaster or not, that a judicious application of guano will more certainly restore productiveness to worn out land, or add fertility to that already productive, than any other substance ever applied.

Want of Faith in the efficacy of guano.--Whatever doubts may have existed in the minds of careful men, there is no room for doubts now, that Peruvian guano possesses regenerating properties beyond belief, without evidence, and capacity to increase the productiveness of lands in sound condition, in such an eminent degree, that any farmer who has the power to obtain it, evinces great folly and perverse obstinacy, if he continue to cultivate his land without applying it; either for want of faith, or pretended disbelief in its efficacy; or because he thinks the price fixed upon it by the Peruvian Government, "unjustifiably high;" or because although he has no doubt it will answer in the moist climate of England, is sure it will never answer in this dry climate; or because he is afraid the luxuriant crops produced by the application of guano will exhaust his land; or because his neighbor Jones killed all his seed corn by putting only a handful in the hill; while Mrs. Jones killed all her flowers and fifty kinds of roses with the "pisen stuff;" and therefore he don't want any more to do with it; or because it has failed to give remuneration under the most injudicious application, made contrary to all instructions or experience of those who have used it; or for any and all the other thousand and one objections raised by those who have never used it, and seem determined they never will; probably because when the almost miraculous accounts of its operations were first published, they had cried out "humbug" so loudly they are determined no after evidence shall convince them the only humbug in the case was in their own disbelief. It is for the benefit of these unbelievers we are now writing. Our object is to present such an array of facts guaranteed by such respectable names, they shall have no hook to hang a doubt upon--no reason--no justifiable excuse for any sane man longer to neglect to apply an article of such positive, certain benefit to his hungry soil.

ED. REYNOLDS ESQ., OF BALTIMORE, ON THE VALUE OF GUANO.

Writing on the subject of "bought manures," as everything is termed not produced upon the farm, and how dubiously they are looked upon by some persons calling themselves good farmers, for fear of being humbugged, Mr. Reynolds says, in a letter dated July, 1850, "Since 1843, I have been trying to find out which is the best of all these 'new things,' and have now, after having been very considerably humbugged, settled down upon bones and guano--although, even the last named in a very dry year, has also 'cheated me'; but this is by no means its character, as I am constrained to admit, that after having tried it on all sorts of soil, and perhaps as long if not longer than any other person in the State, it is my opinion that when properly applied, with an average fair season, it is a very powerful fertilizer. My mode of using it is, when applied to tobacco, to mix one and a half bushels of the Peruvian, (which is ordinarily 100 lbs.) with one bushel rich earth, and one bushel of plaster, which admits about the fifth part of a gill of the mixture to each hill for every 5,000 hills--and putting it in the center of the check before being scraped--so that when the hill is made, it lies beneath the plant. On wheat, I apply three bushels of Peruvian guano equal to 200 lbs. mixed with one bushel of plaster, one bushel rich earth to the acre, sowing on the surface and plowing it in as soon and as deep as possible, after it is sowed. The past spring I have put 300 lbs. to the acre, on 30 acres of corn, being half of a field, on a farm in Calvert, mixing with it the same quantity of rich earth and plaster, and sowing on the surface, plowing in at once very deep, using the cultivator only in working it afterwards. I do not intend to use it at all with corn, hereafter, but not because I do not think it also a good fertilizer with this crop, (as my corn on my Calvert farm, upon which it has been used, now shows very fair,) but only because it has never failed to pay me three fold better on wheat, than on anything else. In order to test its virtue, it is essentially necessary to plow it in deeply, and stir it as little as possible afterwards."

Bones.--Of these I have used both ground and crushed, and always to advantage at ten to twelve bushels per acre; bought from manufacturers here, and agents of houses in New York; but I am using the crushed dissolved by oil of vitriol, as prepared by myself on my farm in Calvert in the following way: The bones, (which we buy in the neighborhood at 50 cents per 112 lbs.) after breaking them with a small sledge hammer on an old anvil, we put at the rate of three bushels in half a hogshead, and apply to that quantity 75 lbs. oil of vitriol, filling up the half hogshead to within eight inches of the top with water, letting them remain, (but stir the contents occasionally with a stick,) say two to five weeks, according to the quality and strength of the vitriol; then start the contents of the half hogshead into a large iron kettle, apply a slight fire and the whole contents will in less than an hour be reduced to a perfect jelly. We use two half hogsheads at once, to prepare it expeditiously. We then mix the contents of each kettle, with a horse cart load of rich earth, or ashes, throwing in a half barrel of plaster, mix or compost it handsomely, and use at pleasure, on an acre of land with any crop you choose, and you will have permanently improved two acres at the following cost, viz: Bones, $1.50, vitriol, $3.75, plaster, $1.12, making $6.37, or $3.18 per acre, and this may be repeated so as with proper attention, as much lasting improvement may be made each year as many farmers derive from their barn yards. Bones in any form never fails to show their striking effects on clover and other grasses--but either bones or guano will scarcely ever fail to produce a better crop of clover, which, with the increased quantity of straw, (particularly when guano is used,) will enable and encourage the saving of larger quantities of barn yard manure, and which must inevitably cause a lasting improvement.

This coincides with our views exactly, as we have in all these pages endeavored to impress upon our readers, that the increased growth of straw from the use of guano, will increase the manure pile, and "inevitably cause a lasting improvement."

Poudrette.--"I have used also, to good advantage, particularly on clayey lands, at the rate of six to eight barrels per acre. It is a first rate top dressing on young clover in spring, at two to three barrels per acre; this article has been prepared so badly heretofore, that a great quantity of it was really worthless."

We also concede to poudrette as much credit as Mr. Reynolds but as will be seen, it will cost more to improve land with it than with guano.

Prepared Guano--Agricultural Salts--Generators and Regenerators.--Of these, the testimony of Mr. Reynolds is exactly to the point, concise and strong, and exactly in accordance with all the facts we have been able to collect upon the same subject. He says, "I have tried them on corn, wheat, oats, clover and tobacco; but have yet to discover that they ever generated anything for me, though I have heard them sometimes well spoken of."

Want of room in this pamphlet alone prevents us from inserting the names and operations of many other gentlemen in this rapidly improving State--a State now undergoing the process of renovation by the use of guano, to a greater extent, perhaps, than any other in the Union.

GUANO IN DELAWARE.

Hon. John M. Clayton's Farm.--No one who looks upon this highly improved farm now, with its most luxuriant crops, can be made to believe it was a barren waste seven years ago--hardly worth fencing or cultivating. This great change, so far beyond the power of human belief, has been effected by lime, plaster and guano. The railroad from Frenchtown to New Castle, passes through this farm, four miles from the latter place. It is well worthy a visit from any one anxious to make personal observations of the effects of "bought manures," upon a soil too poor to support a goose per acre.

Effect of Guano on Oats.--During a visit to Mr. Clayton, in 1851, we saw the most luxuriant growth of oats upon one of the fields of this farm, which we have ever witnessed, and it has been our fortune to see some tall specimens of this crop on the bottom lands of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The seed he had obtained from England, and the means of making it grow, from Peru. The guano was plowed in with the oats, at the rate of 350 lbs. to the acre. The soil is a yellow clayey loam. The effect upon other crops had been equally beneficial. The growth of clover was so great he had purchased thirty bullocks to fatten, for the purpose of trying to consume some of his surplus feed. The effect upon wheat, corn, potatoes, turnips, garden vegetables and fruit trees, was almost as astonishing as upon the oats and grass.

C. P. Holcomb, Esq., one of the most improving farmers of one of the most improving counties in the U.S., has met with great success in the use of lime, plaster, and guano. His beautiful highly improved home farm is near Newcastle; but that upon which he has met with great success in the use of guano, lies about four miles from Dover. Before he purchased it had become celebrated for its miserable poverty. It is now equally celebrated for its productiveness. The use of guano in that part of the State has now reached a point far beyond what the most sanguine would have dared to predict four years ago; and the benefits are of the most flattering kind. Lands have been increased in value to a far greater extent than all the money paid for guano; while the increased profit from the annual crops, has produced corresponding improvements in the condition and happiness of the people.

No greater blessing, said an intelligent gentleman to me, ever was bestowed upon the people of Delaware.