Part 25

ASHES AND THEIR USE.

Some soils contain already the chemical ingredients which wood ashes supply. If lime be applied to a calcareous soil, it will do no good; there was no want of lime there before; if potash be added to a soil already abounding in it, no effect will be seen in the crops. Ashes contain lime and potash (phosphate of lime and silicate of potash). If a soil is naturally rich in these, the addition of ashes would be useless. Such cases show the true benefits of a really scientific knowledge of soils and manures. Every plant that grows takes out of the soil certain qualities. Wheat, among other things, extracts largely of its potash; Indian corn abstracts but little; potatoes extract phosphate of magnesia, etc. A chemist would say, at once, apply that kind of manure which is rich in the peculiar property extracted by your wheat, corn, or potatoes! What manure is that? Here again science must help. It analyzes manures—gives the farmer the choice among them. The soil being known, the properties required by different crops being known—the farmer applies that manure which contains what the soil lacks. Experiments have seemed to show, that, for purposes of tillage, leached ashes are just as good as the unleached. So that housewives may have all the use of their ashes for soap, and then employ them in the garden. Leached ashes become better by being exposed for some time in the air absorbing from the atmosphere fertilizing qualities (carbonic acid?)

So valuable are ashes regarded in Europe, that they are frequently hauled by farmers from twenty miles’ distance—and on Long Island they bring eight cents a bushel.

The ashes of different kinds of wood are of very unequal value—that of the oak the least, and that of beech the most valuable. The latter wood constitutes two-thirds of the fire-wood of this region, and the ashes are therefore the very best.

A coat of ashes may be laid, in the spring, over the whole garden and spaded in with the barnyard manure.

They may be dug in about gooseberry and currant bushes.

They are excellent about the trunks of fruit-trees, spreading the old each year, and renewing the deposit.

They may be thinly spread over the grass-plat in the dooryard, as they will give vigor and deeper color and strength to the grass.

We have usually added about one shovelful of ashes to every twenty in making a compost for flowers, roses, shrubs, etc.

Ashes are peculiarly good for all kinds of melon, squash, and cucumber vines. This is well known to those who raise watermelons on burnt fields, on old charcoal pits, etc. We have seen statements of cucumbers being planted upon a peck of pure, leached ashes, in a hole in the ground, and thriving with great vigor. The ashes of vines show a great amount of potash; and as wood ashes afford this substance abundantly, its use would seem to be indicated by theory as well as confirmed by experiment.

Lastly, whenever ground is liable to suffer severely from drought, we would advise a liberal use of ashes and salt.

HARD TIMES.

What are called hard times produce very different effects on different individuals. Some are made more industrious, and some more indolent; some grow frugal and careful, others careless and desperate; some never appear so honest as when brought to the pinch, but many men seem honest until they are brought to the trial, and then give way. Hard times are gradually passing away. As a community, are we better or worse off than before? A few particulars may help us to form some judgment.

Fewer goods are bought at the store, and more are manufactured at home; spinning-wheels and looms have renewed their youth—and so have our mothers, who, after a long disuse, may now be seen working as merrily at them, as they used to do when they spun and wove their wedding furnishings—although they have not now any such rosy hope to quicken their aged fingers. Men have been obliged to rely more upon their own ingenuity—for want of money to pay the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shoe-maker, etc. Old clothes, old tools have been made to serve an additional campaign.

The leisure of dull times has been improved extensively in setting out orchards, and we hope this practice will be continued in busy times. No one has, during the pressure, suffered for food, raiment, or shelter. Indeed, it is supposed that not a pound less of sugar, tea and coffee, has been used by the farmers than hitherto. Probably the quantity has increased.

Debts have been gradually contracted or discharged. Men have seen the end of speculations to be sudden disaster—and (of all things on earth) speculation-farming has received its reward. Men contented with small gains—industrious, frugal, and prudent men have suffered almost nothing.

GYPSUM.—“Time and practice” have ascertained the circumstances under which gypsum should be applied. As a reason why, after repeated applications, it no longer benefits, Prof. Liebig says, “when we increase the crop of hay in a meadow by means of gypsum, we remove a greater quantity of potash with the hay, than can, under ordinary circumstances, be restored. Hence it happens that, after the lapse of several years, the crops of grass on lands manured with gypsum, diminish, owing to the deficiency of potash.” In such a case, if spent ashes were employed either in connection or alternately with gypsum—potash would be resupplied from the ashes.

ACCLIMATING A PLOW.

The other day we were riding past a large farm, and were much gratified at a device of the owner for the preservation of his tools. A good plow, apparently new in the spring, had been left in one corner of the field, standing in the furrow, just where, four months before, the boy had finished his stint. Probably the timber needed seasoning—it was certainly getting it. Perhaps it was left out for acclimation. May-be the farmer left it there to save time in the hurry of the spring-work, in dragging it from the shed. Perhaps he covered the share to keep it from the elements, and save it from rusting. Or, again, perhaps he is troubled with neighbors that borrow, and had left it where it would be convenient for them. He might, at least, have built a little shed over it. Can any one tell what a farmer leaves a plow out a whole season for? It is barely possible that he was an Irishman, and had planted for a spring crop of plows.

After we got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream. We went into that man’s barn; boards were kicked off, partitions were half broken down, racks broken, floor a foot deep with manure, hay trampled under foot and wasted, grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered about—hames in one place, the breeching in another—the lines were used for halters. We went to the house. A shed stood hard by, in which a family wagon was kept for wife and daughters to go to town in. The hens had appropriated it as a roost, and however plain it was once, it was ornamented now, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it be remembered that hen-dung is the best manure for melons, squashes, cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke-house, but of all the “fixings” that we ever saw! A Chinese Museum is nothing to it. Onions, soap-grease, squashes, hogs’ bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a broken spinning-wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing tubs, a barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots, smoked sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since the last “smoke,” stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten apples, together with rats, bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs, and other vermin which collect in damp dirt. We started for the house; the window near the door had twelve lights, two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of rags, one of a pillow, and the rest of glass. Under it stood several cooking pots, and several that were not for cooking. As we were meditating whether to enter, such a squall arose from a quarrelling man and woman, that we awoke—and lo! it was a dream. So that the man who left his plow out all the season, may live in the neatest house in the county, for all that we know; only, was it not strange that we should have dreamed all this from just seeing a plow left out in the furrow.

SCOUR YOUR PLOWS BRIGHT!

Farmers may be surprised to know that their crops will depend a good deal on the color of the plows! yet so it is. Bright plows are found to produce much better crops than any other. It may be electricity, or magic for aught we know; we merely state the fact, leaving others to account for it. But very much depends upon the manner of doing it, for merely scrubbing it by hand with emery or sand is not the thing—it must be scoured by the soil. It is found that the subsoil scours it better for wheat, than the top soil—for a plow kept bright by very deep plowing affords better wheat than a plow brightened by the surface of the soil. It is the same with corn. In respect to this last crop, if you will keep your plow bright as a mirror until the corn is in the milk, you will find that it will have a wonderful effect. We appeal to every good farmer if he ever knew a rusty plow to be accompanied with good crops? Iron rust on a plow-share is poisonous to corn.

A young farmer of about twenty years of age said to us the other day: “If anybody wants me, he must come to my corn-field; I live there—I am at it all the time—I have harrowed my corn once, plowed five times, and gone over it with the hoe once.” “Yes,” said his old father, who seemed, justly, quite proud of his son—“keep your plows agoing if you want to fetch corn. I never let the ground settle on the top; if it is beaten down by rain, or begins to look a kind of rusty on the surface, I pitch into it, and keep it as mealy as flour. The fact is our farmers raise more corn than they can tend, they can’t go over the corn more than once or twice, and that’ll never do, and I guess I’ll show old Billy R—— that it’s so.”

Some ambitious farmers are pleased to “lay by” the corn very early; but it is not wise; for the grass is always more forward to grow about this season than any other; and the ground will become very foul where corn is too early laid by, and, what is more to the purpose, a great deal of the nourishment of a crop is derived from the air and dew conveyed to the roots. This can be done only when the surface is kept thoroughly open.

PLOW TILL IT IS DRY, AND PLOW TILL IT IS WET.

Speaking of corn, a very intelligent gentleman remarked: “Well, by a five minutes’ talk, I made Mr. —— produce the best crop he ever had on a certain field.” He was looking over the fence where his corn was, at a flat field, upon furrows full of water; as I came by he said: “Well, I shall never get a crop off this piece of land; it’s going just as it always does when I plant here.” I told him of an old man in Indiana, who was a good farmer, to whom I once said when at his house one morning:

“Deafenbaugh, how is it that you always have good corn when no one else gets a half crop?”

“Why,” said he, “when it is wet I plow it till it is dry, and when it is dry I plow it till it is wet.”