Part 36

FRIABLE.—A friable soil is one which crumbles easily. Clay is adhesive, or in common language clammy: leaf-mold is friable, or crumbling. Clay becomes friable when, by exposure to air or frost, or by addition of sand, vegetable matter, etc., it is thoroughly mellowed.

DRAINING WET LANDS.

Before many years there will be thousands of acres pierced with drains. But the inducements to it which make it wise in England and New England do not yet, generally, exist in the West. The expense of draining one acre would buy two. Many farmers have already more arable land than they can till to advantage. Land redeemed from slough would not pay for itself in many years.

But although a general introduction of draining would not be wise, there are many cases in which, to a limited extent, it should be practised. Lands lying near to cities are sufficiently valuable, and the market for farming products sure enough, to justify the reclaiming of wet pieces of land. On small farms of forty and eighty acres, surrounded by high-priced lands, not easily procured for enlarging his farm if the owner should wish it, draining might be employed with advantage. A man with a small farm can afford expenses for high cultivation which would break a large farmer.

Some times a large meadow or arable field is marred by a wet slash through the middle of it; a farmer would not begrudge the labor of draining for the sake of having his favorite field without a blemish. Sometimes farms are intersected by wet lands, which make the passage from one part of the farm to another difficult at all times, and almost impassable at some seasons of the year. Draining might be resorted to in such a case, not so much for the sake of the land reclaimed, as for the convenience of the whole farm.

We know pieces of wet, peaty meadow land lying close by the farm-house, the only drawback to the beauty of the place. A good farmer would wish to recover such a spot for the same reason that he would prefer a handsome house to a homely one—a fine horse over a coarse-looking animal—a sightly fence, rather than a clumsy one. There is much strong land—but high, flat, and cold—which is wet through all the spring, resisting seed till long after other portions of the farm are at work, and which would, but for this backwardness, be regarded as the best land. If without great expense, such land could be cured, few farmers would mind the trouble or labor.

There are three kinds of draining which may be employed according to circumstances—subsoil-plowing, furrow-draining and ditch-draining. When a soil is underbound by a compact, impervious subsoil, all the rain or melting snow is retained in the soil until it can exhale and evaporate. For the subsoil acts like a water-tight floor, or the bottom of a tub. Subsoil-plowing, by thoroughly working through this under crust, gives a downward passage to the moisture; water sinks as it does in sandy loams. Nor will such treatment be less useful to prevent the injury of summer drought; for the depth of soil affords a harbor for roots from whence they can draw moisture when the top-soil is dry as ashes.

But there is a limit put to this treatment by the amount of clay contained in the subsoil. It has been experimentally ascertained in England, that when the soil contains as high as forty-three per cent of alumina (clay) sub-soil-plowing is useless, because the clay soon coalesces and is as impervious as ever. In such cases, if the land has a slight inclination in any direction, furrow-draining may, in some measure, relieve it. The ground is marked out in lands as for sowing grain and plowed with back-furrows, throwing the earth toward the centre. The rain and snow will run to either side, and flow off by the channels left between each strip. This treatment does not relieve the land, to any great extent, of water contained in it, but acts as a preventive, by carrying off the rain and snow before they are absorbed.

O DEAR! SHALL WE EVER BE DONE LYING?

An honest old gentleman, in telling us his troubles, gave great prominence to the necessity he was frequently under of disappointing his customers, whose work could not be finished as soon as he had promised. After explaining the difficulty, he looked up with great earnestness, and exclaimed, “O dear! shall we ever be done with this lying?”

We have often wondered ourselves whether such a consummation would ever take place. “Your boots shall be done on Saturday night without fail.” Nevertheless, you have to go to church with gaping shoes for want of them. “Your coat shall be sent home by nine o’clock on Saturday night;” and you get it, in fact, the Wednesday after. “Will you lend me your wheel-barrow? I will return it to-night.” You wait for it till next week, and then send for it. My carpenter solemnly agreed to finish my house by November; but it was July before I could get the key. My wood was to be split on Saturday afternoon—enough for the Sabbath; so it was—but I had to do it. My money was to be paid me the next week; and then, next week; and then, NEXT week—and then, as soon as he could get it; he did get it and spent it; and then it should be paid when he got it again—he got it again, and paid another debt because the man treated him more savagely than I would. The strength laid out in running for this money, if it had been economically applied to labor, would, nearly, have earned the whole debt. The fellow never paid me at last; but Death came along, and he paid him promptly. “O dear! shall we ever get done with this lying?” It is one of the few domestic manufactures which need no protection, and flourishes without benefit either to the producer or consumer.

CARE OF STOCK IN WINTER.

Perhaps no better sign of careful husbandry can be found than in the attention paid to brute animals. We always expect a thriftless fellow to neglect and abuse his stock. When we see them well cared for, we always judge the owner to be a good farmer. Cattle ranging out often have had good picking, and if partly fed at the rack, will come out in the spring well-conditioned. Where hay and grain are a drug, we suppose that all cautions about wasting them will be laughed at. Care and economy are not the peculiar features of western farming; profusion and easiness are the more characteristic. But there are some points of attention to which every farmer should give heed.

CLEANING THE STABLE.—When cattle lie out, this trouble is saved in their case. But it is almost universally the practice to let the manure accumulate in stables for horses from autumn to spring, and sometimes from year to year, until its quantity compels its removal. This is all well enough for the sake of the manure—it is sheltered, and its strength preserved. But it is at the expense of the horse. The concentrated effluvia is bad; and lying down upon manure, night after night, causes the skin to break out in blotches; and sometimes the whole ham is affected so much that the hair comes off, and the skin is inflamed and covered with running sores. The ammonia of urine (which abounds in horse manure), is caustic, and acts upon the skin like a blister upon the human flesh. If Providence had ordained that a sore should break out on the owner, for every one on his stock occasioned by his negligence, animals would have a much better time than they now do.

COWS WITH CALF.—Especial attention should be paid to these. As they grow heavy, toward spring, they should not be chased by horses or dogs, or beaten by unmannerly boys and men. Their food should be abundant and nutritious. A cow brought to calving in spring in a very thin and lean condition will not recover through the whole summer, no matter how carefully tended. The cow, the calf, and your own profit in both, require that you should bring your cows to the spring in first-rate condition. If you have roots, feed them; but if not, give a slop of shorts, meal, and flax-seed cake. This last ingredient is eminently serviceable in laying on flesh.

MILKING COWS.—Let them be milked regularly without regard to weather. A careless girl will, if not watched, milk irregularly, and what is worse, leave the cow unstript. The morning work presses, or the cold pinches, or she is in haste, at night, to go a visiting, or some one of a hundred other reasons tempt her to milk out the full flow, and leave the strippings. A cow so abused will be injured, in a short time, so much, that all the care in the world will not bring her back again.

See that stock are treated with gentleness and patience. It is a shame to abuse a kind and docile animal, and it is useless to thrash those that are not so. In either case, kindness is the best policy. A man who is brutal to cattle is more of a beast than they are. We have seen many a man who, if he had two more legs, would not fetch the price of a stock-hog.

DEEP PLANTING.

We saw recently a potato which grew at the depth of twenty-five feet below the surface of the earth. This is an extraordinary depth. Few things planted at that depth would vegetate. The fact in this case is unquestionable. The top was terminated by a cluster of blossoms, and the potatoes were of the size of small hickory-nuts.

P. S. Another fact, which like to have been omitted in this account, is, that it grew at the bottom of an open well.

CORN AND MILLET FOR FODDER.

The practice of sowing grains for fodder has been practised with great success. MILLET is sown in May, June, or July, at the rate of three pecks of seed to the acre. It is, usually, ready for the scythe in about ninety days. Thick sowing is best. Cut when the grain is fairly out of the milk, and cure it like hay. Four tons is a fair yield—two tons is a small crop.

INDIAN CORN should be sown broadcast at the rate of four to five bushels to the acre. Corn belongs to the tribe of grasses. Cultivating it for the grain, in rows, with every stimulant of air, light, and manure, develops the stalk almost to a tree form. When sown for fodder, the object should be to produce it, as nearly as possible, like a grass. Thick sowing will tend to do it, and each stalk being small and tender, the crop will be easily masticated by cattle. By good management six or eight tons may be cut to the acre—cutting twice in the season. The first mowing should be about the period of silking. The next, whenever the shoots have grown again to a proper size. If but one mowing is intended, it should be permitted to stand a week or two later than when two crops are to be taken. For, all plants prepare the most of nutritious juices at the period of their fruiting. Indian corn is the richest in saccharine matter at about the time its grain is turning from a milky to a mealy state. Cattle will eat either of the above grains, treated like a grass crop, with great avidity; and every one knows that it is desirable to give them a change of food through the winter.

SEED SAVING.

The seeds of cucumber, melon, etc., are better, at any rate, when four of five years old than when fresh; and we have well authenticated instances of seeds retaining their vitality much longer than this. There is no fixed period during which seeds will keep. There is no reason to suppose that they would lose their vitality in any assignable number of years if the proper conditions were observed. De Candolle says that M. Gerardin raised kidney beans, obtained from Tournefort’s herbarium, which were at least a hundred years old; but beans left to the chances of the atmosphere are not good the second year, and hardly worth planting in the third. Professor Lindley raised raspberry plants from seed not less than sixteen or seventeen hundred years old. Multitudes of other instances might be given. In reply to the first question, it may, then, be said, that the length of time through which seeds will keep depends upon the method of preserving them.

We do not suppose it to be essential to inclose apple, pear, and quince seeds in earth for the purpose of preserving their vitality during a single winter. But if exposed to the air, the rind becomes so hard and rigid as to make germination very difficult from mere mechanical reasons. The moisture of the soil keeps the covering in a tender state, and it is easily ruptured by the expansion of the seed.

The shell of peach, plum, and other stone-fruit seeds would form, if left to dry and harden, a yet more hopeless prison. If kept for two years, the most stone-fruit pips, it is to be presumed, would not germinate. Some, however, would have vigor enough to grow even then. We have forgotten who it was, but believe it to have been a reliable person, recently mentioned the fact, that a peach or apricot stone was for several years kept as a child’s play-thing; but upon being planted, grew, and is now a healthy tree. Such cases are, however, rare.

The intercourse between Great Britain and her distant colonies, and the various expeditions fitted out from her shores for purposes of botanical research and for the acquisition of new plants from distant regions, have made the subject of seed-saving at sea a matter of much experiment.