Part 20

It neutralises free acids which exist in the soil. This is done with quick-lime or air-slaked; the first combining directly with the acid—the second by liberating its carbonic acid and then combining with the acid of the soil, leaving the carbonic acid to be food for plants. It is very well known by those accustomed to use peaty substances for manures, and meadow mud, that they will rather injure than benefit soils, until their acid has been neutralized.

Lime decomposes vegetable fibre, and reduces tough ligneous substances, to a consideration in which they can be appropriated by plants. For this purpose quick-lime should be used and may be applied at the rate of from twenty to thirty bushels to the acre.

Lime enters into combination with sand or silex, forming a substance different from either of them. Even strong clays will be found to contain much silex; and lime, by combining with it, makes the soil friable or crumbling.

CULTURE OF HOPS.

We shall state such facts as are within our reach, and leave each one to make his own calculations.

THE HOP PLANT.—The hop belongs to the natural order, Urticeæ, or the nettle and hemp family. Its root is perennial; its stem annual, twining to the height of from fifteen to twenty feet. They bear male and female flowers on different plants, and the female is the only one used for planting.

SOIL.—Rich, friable clay, and hearty loams, and vegetable molds are the best soils. A wet subsoil is fatal to their health. Any rich, light, dry (but not droughty) soil suits them. A large crop may be obtained from our rich alluvions, or bottom lands; but although uplands yield a less crop, the quality is regarded as decidedly superior. A wet clay subsoil is not good.

PLANTING.—Plants are set out in rows six to eight feet apart and six to eight feet from hill to hill in the row. Rooted plants, but more frequently cuttings from old plants are employed; five or six being planted to the hill. Poles from fifteen to twenty feet in length are placed to each hill. In England from three to six and even eight are placed to each hill. But three is about the average number.

HARVEST.—No crop is more variable than this; the yield per acre ranging according to the season from 300 to 2,000 lbs. On rich bottom lands 2,000 lbs. may be not unfrequently raised; but on an average, from 700 to 1,000 lbs. may be reckoned.

The plants bloom in July and are ready for harvest by the first of September. It is necessary to gather them promptly, as they soon deteriorate if allowed to remain after they are ripe. As soon as gathered they are kiln-dried, then placed from ten days to two weeks to cool, and, finally, they are baled for market.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.—A plantation will last in full vigor for ten years, and then will decline, but gradually, for ten more, when it is to be broken up. Fifteen years, perhaps, is the average duration of the hop plantations. They exhaust the soil, withdrawing much and returning little to it. Hops vary exceedingly in price in different years, not only on account of the varying supply arising from the uncertainty of yield, but from the quality of the article in different years. The average price in the United States is not far from sixteen cents per pound. Sometimes they rise to thirty, forty, and even fifty cents per pound.

From the moment of sprouting, in the spring, until the hop is ready for the kiln, they are liable to disaster from insects or disease. Nowhere has more experience been had in their cultivation than in England. Brown says, “they are exposed to more diseases than any other plant with which we are acquainted, and the trade offers greater room for speculation than any other exercised within the British dominions.” Parkinson, with a quaint play upon the word hop, says, “the hop is said to be a plant very properly named, as there is never any certainty in cultivating it.”

If the crop is to be planted largely, it would seem plain, from the foregoing, that one should have capital enough to be able to bear some losses, at least, at first. For ordinary cultivators, if the experiment is to be made, it would be better to begin with a small plantation at first, embarking more largely as knowledge and skill increase, and as experience determines its profitableness.

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GRAPE VINES should be trimmed before the sap begins to rise, else they will bleed, to their great injury. If it be neglected till the sap is in motion, let the cultivator wait till the leaves are about the size of a dollar; then cutting may be performed without injury.

WHITE CLOVER.

We are inclined to suppose that the excellences of white clover have not been enough esteemed among our farmers; indeed, they have adopted a few grasses as special favorites upon whom all favors are lavished, and the rest are totally or very nearly rejected.

In regions where dairies abound, and where, therefore, the subject of pasturage is of vital interest, those grasses are sown which spring early in the year and continue late; which grow quickly, abundantly, and shoot again rapidly after being cropped; which are nutritious; which tend to produce milk, and impart to it high flavor. If any one grass possessed all these properties, it would be perfect; and, for pastures, all others might be rejected. As it is, several grasses must conspire to form a sward possessed of these diverse excellences. In this joint result white clover bears no mean place. It is, on congenial soils, of vigorous growth, eminently conducive to the production of milk, and milk of fine flavor. These are its peculiar virtues. Besides these, it possesses in common with other pasture plants, hardiness, tenacity of life, nutritiousness for beef-cattle. Thaër, the most eminent practical, and scientific cultivator of his day, says: “It is certainly the most generally approved of all plants that are cultivated for this (pasture) purpose.” Sinclair, whose authority in grasses will not be disputed, says: “nor does it form a good pasture when sown by itself … but, combined with other grasses, it is a valuable plant.” Great quantities of seed are annually sown in England by the best farmers. Fessenden, of New England, says, “it does not contain as much nutritive matter as red clover; yet its value as a pasture-grass is universally admitted.” This is the experience of Germany, England, and New England. Has experience determined that these good qualities are suppressed in western pastures? Or is there such a prejudice against it on account of its prying, intrusive disposition in arable lands, that our farmers are unwilling to give it a chance?

PLOWING CORN.

Many farmers, because their fathers did so before them, plow their corn lands very shallow before planting; but make up for it in deep plowing while dressing the corn crop. Why is corn plowed at all?

1. TO DESTROY WEEDS.—In this climate if a plow is not kept lively in the early part of the season, weeds will completely take the crop. The soil is like a table full of food. Every man who sits down to it makes it less. Every weed eats up a part of the soil, and takes away, needlessly, so much from the corn. But it is not merely the nutritive ingredients which are extracted—but what, on some soils, in some seasons, is even worse—weeds drink up the moisture. There are many soils which could afford to lose much mineral and vegetable substance without lessening the supply for corn; but, in this climate, in ordinary seasons, no soil can afford to squander its moisture.

But a corn crop is often put in to act as a cleanser of the soil when it has become foul. This end can only be answered by a rigid persecution and destruction of the weeds throughout the whole growing season. Some farmers, strangely enough, will deal thoroughly with their fields, but allow the edges and fence rows to swarm with weeds that luxuriate and ripen seed which the winds scatter all over the field. This is as if a man should busy himself all day long, in driving hogs out of his field, but leave all the holes open where they broke in. The soil should be thoroughly worked.

2. TO PREVENT DRYNESS.—Nothing is wider of the truth, than letting corn alone in dry weather for fear of “firing” it. If the plow begins early, and is kept going, no drought likely to occur in our climate can do much injury; especially if the ground has been broken up deep before planting.

Where the atmosphere is very dry, very hot and windy, the evaporation of moisture from the plant, and from the surface of the soil, is excessive. A hill of corn will exhale many pounds of moisture in a day. There is no remedy for excessive exhalation from plants; but this renders it yet more necessary that a supply should be kept up at the roots. If the soil therefore, is permitted to evaporate from its surface, the double draught upon its moisture—through the plant, and from the surface—will soon exhaust its water.

Everybody knows that if a board or cloth be put upon the ground, in dry weather, the earth under it will remain moist—its aqueous particles being checked in their passage upward. If a shovelful of fine manure be laid in a heap upon a spot of ground, the same effect will be produced. Gardeners are accustomed to cover the earth about shrubs with an inch or two of fine sand; experience teaching them that it preserves the moisture of the soil. Now, if the soil, instead of being covered with sand, or light manure, be itself pulverized, the same effect will be produced—and for reasons which will appear. When the soil is compact the moisture ascends from particle to particle without obstruction. Every crevice which separates the particles of earth, checks the passage of the moisture. This may be more readily seen in an analogous case—the transmission of heat. Take two nail-rods, lay the end of one in the fire; divide the other into inch pieces and lay them in a row from the fire, each piece touching the other. The transmission of heat in the rod made up of pieces will be checked at each point of division, while the uncut rod will heat rapidly. On this principle, an iron chain two feet long, with one end thrust into fire, will not transmit heat through its length near so soon as a solid bar of the same length.

If this reasoning be true, and experience bears it out, the plow should be kept running in dry times to save a crop from drought. But if the farmer has neglected his corn, waiting for rain, and begins to plow after his ground is very dry, and plows deep, breaking the roots of his corn, the crop will be “fired;” for, in this case, besides the evaporation from the leaves and the dryness of the soil, he commences breaking the roots by which the crop drinks what little water there may be left for it. Of course it despairs when it is attacked on one side by the heat, and on the other by the foolish farmer, and underneath by a treacherously dry soil. Begin, then, early, and plow often, and you may defy dry summers and cram your crib with hearty crops of corn.

BREAKING THE ROOTS.—Many farmers study to break the roots of their corn. We have heard them boast of ripping them up with a big plow till they clogged it up like bundles of yarn. It is done by some because others do it; those who attempt to reason, say, that if a root be broken it immediately puts out many more from the point of breakage; and the practice of root-pruning fruit-trees is cited, to show that the fruitfulness of a plant is increased by reducing the root and checking the growth of the wood. It is not true that the fruitfulness of a tree is increased by root-pruning, but, it is made to yield its fruit earlier. It is a device to bring trees rapidly into bearing. A pear-tree (grafted) requires from five to eight years before it is matured enough to commence bearing. By mutilation of root, bending of branches, or by a poor gravelly soil, the tree is partially forbidden to grow, and obliged to ripen its wood and fit it for fruit-bearing. But had it grown to its natural size, it would then have borne even more fruit than when dwarfed.

No such practice is required upon annual plants, whose ripening is not delayed through years, but which come up and ripen and die within the limits of a single season. They need no artificial treatment to accelerate the fruiting, because it ordinarily makes no difference whether the corn crop comes in September or October. It is better to select varieties of corn which ripen within the limits of the season natural to the region where it is planted. Then there will be no occasion to break roots, or to apply any other artificial and violent process to accelerate maturation.