What I know of farming:

XVII.

COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS – GYPSUM

Prices vary so widely in different localities that no fertilizer can be pronounced everywhere cheapest or best worth buying; and yet I doubt that there is a rood of our country's surface in fit condition to be cultivated to which Gypsum (Plaster of Paris) might not be applied with profit. Where it costs $10 or over per tun, I would apply it sparingly – say, one bushel per acre – while I judge three bushels per acre none too much in regions where it may be bought much cheaper. Even the poor man who has but one cow, should buy a barrel of it, and dust his stable therewith after cleaning it each day. He who has a stock of cattle should never be without it, and should freely use it, alike in stable and yard, to keep down the noisome odors, and thus retain the volatile elements of the manure. Every meadow, every pasture, should be sown with it at least triennially; where it is abundant and cheap, as in Central New-York, I would apply it each year, unless careful observation should satisfy me that it no longer subserved a good purpose.

As to the time of application, while I judge any season will do, my present impression is that it will do most good if applied when the Summer is hottest and the ground driest. If, for instance, you close your haying in mid-Summer, having been hurried by the rapid ripening of the grass, and find your meadows baked and cracked by the intense heat, I reckon that you may proceed to dust those meadows with Gypsum with a moral certainty that none of it will be wasted. So if your Corn and other Fall crops are suffering from and likely to be stunted by drouth, I advise the application of Gypsum broadcast, as evenly as may be and as bounteously as its price and your means will allow. I do not believe it so well to apply it specially to the growing stalks, a spoon-full or so per hill; and I doubt that it is ever judicious to plant it in the hill with the seed. The readiest and quickest mode of application is also, I believe, the best.

How Gypsum impels and invigorates vegetable growth, I do not pretend to know; but that it does so was demonstrated by Nature long before Man took the hint that she freely gave. The city of Paris and a considerable adjacent district rest on a bed of Gypsum, ranging from five to twenty feet below the surface, and considerably decomposed in its upper portion by the action of water. This region produces Wheat most luxuriantly, and I presume has done so from time immemorial. At length it crawled through the hair of the tillers of this soil that the substance which did so much good fortuitously, and (as it were) because it could not do otherwise, might do still more if applied to the soil, with deliberate intent to test its value as a fertilizer. The result we all understand.

Gypsum is a chemical compound of Sulphur and Lime – so much is agreed; and the theory of chemists has been that; as the winds pass over a surface sown with it, the Ammonia which has been exhaled by a thousand barn-yards, bogs, &c., having a stronger affinity for Sulphur than Lime has, dissolves the Gypsum, combines with the Sulphur, forming a Sulphate of Ammonia, and leaves the Lime to get on as it may. I accept this theory, having no reason to distrust it; and, knowing that Sulphate of Ammonia is a powerful stimulant of vegetable growth (as any one may be assured by buying a little of it from some druggist and making the necessary application), I can readily see how the desired result might in this way be produced. For our purpose, however, let it suffice that it is produced, of which almost any one may be convinced by sowing with Gypsum and passing by alternate strips or belts of the same clover field. I suspect that not many fertilizers repay their cost out of the first crop; but I account Gypsum one of them; and I submit that no farmer can afford not to try it. That its good effect is diminished by many and frequent applications, is highly probable; but there is no hill or slope to which Gypsum has never yet been applied which ought not to make its acquaintance this very year. I am confident that there are pastures which might be made to increase their yield of Grass one-third by a moderate dressing of it.

I have heard Andrew B. Dickinson, late of Steuben County, and one of the best unscientific, unlearned farmers ever produced by our State, maintain that he can not only enrich his own farm but impoverish his neighbors' by the free use of Gypsum on his woodless hills. The chemist's explanation of this effect is above indicated. The plastered land attracts and absorbs not only its own fair proportion of the breeze-borne Ammonia, but much that, if the equilibrium had not been disturbed by such application, would have been deposited on the adjacent hills. As Mr. D. makes not the smallest pretensions to science, the coincidence between his dictum and the chemist's theory is noteworthy.

Now that our country is completely gridironed with Canals and Railroads, bringing whatever has a mercantile value very near every one's door, I suggest that no township should go without Gypsum. Five dollars will buy at least two barrels of it almost anywhere; and two barrels may be sown over five or six acres. Let it be sown so that its effect (or non-effect) may be palpable; give it a fair, careful trial, and await the result. If it seem to subserve no good purpose, be not too swift to enter up judgment; but buy two barrels more, vary your time and method of application, and try again. If the result be still null, let it be given up that Gypsum is not the fertilizer needed just there – that some ill-understood peculiarity of soil or climate renders it there ineffective. Then let its use be there abandoned; but it will still remain true that, in many localities and in countless instances, Gypsum has been fully proved one of the best and cheapest commercial fertilizers known to mankind.

I never tried, but on the strength of others' testimony believe in the improvement of soils by means of calcined clay or earth. Mr. Andrew B. Dickinson showed me where he had, during a dry Autumn plowed up the road-sides through his farm, started fires with a few roots or sticks, and then piled on sods of the upturned clay and grass-roots till the fire was nearly smothered, when each heap smoked and smouldered like a little coal-pit till all of it that was combustible was reduced to ashes, when ashes and burned clay were shoveled into a cart and strewn over his fields, to the decided improvement of their crops. Whoever has a clay sod to plow up, and is deficient in manure, may repeat this experiment with a moral certainty of liberal returns.

XVIII.

ALKALIS … SALT – ASHES – LIME

I do not know a rood of our country's surface so rich in all the materials which enter into the production of the Grains, Grasses, Fruits, and Vegetables, which are the objects and rewards of cultivation, that it could not be improved by the application of fertilizers; if there be such, I heartily congratulate the owners, and advise them not to sell. Nor do I believe that there are many acres so fertile that they would not produce more Indian Corn, more Hemp, more Cotton, and more of whatever may be their appropriate staple, if judiciously fertilized. If there be farms or fields originally so good that manure would not increase their yield, I am confident that the first half-dozen crops will have taken that conceit out of them. Prairies and river-bottoms may yield ever so bounteously; but that very luxuriance of growth insures their gradual exhaustion of certain elements of crops, which must needs be replaced or their product will dwindle. Whoever has sold a thousand bushels of grain, or its equivalent in meat, from his farm, has thereby impoverished that farm, unless he has applied something that balances its loss. "I perceive that virtue has gone out of me," observed the Saviour, because the hem of his garment had been touched; and every field that had been cropped might make a similar report whenever its annual loss by abstraction has not been balanced by some kind of fertilizer. The farmer who grows the largest crops is the most merciless exhauster of the soil, unless he balances his annual drafts (as good farmers rarely fail to do) by at least equal reënforcements of the productive capacity of his fields.

The good farmer begins by inquiring, "Wherein was my soil originally deficient? and of what has it been exhausted by subsequent crops?" I judge that my gravelly hill-sides would reward the application of two hundred loads (or tuns) of pure clay per acre, as I think the clay flats which border Lake Champlain would pay for a like application of sand or fine gravel where that material is found in convenient proximity; and yet, I know very well that, on at least three-fourths of our country's area, such application would cost far more than it would be worth. Every farmer must act on his knowledge of his soil and its peculiar needs, and not blindly follow the dictum of another. Yet I know few farms which, were they mine, I would not consider enhanced in value by a vigorous application of some alkaline substance – Lime, Salt, Ashes, or some of the cheaper Nitrates. I should be very glad to apply one thousand bushels of good house-made, hard-wood Ashes to my twenty acres of arable upland, if I could buy them, delivered, at twenty five cents per bushel; but they are not to be had. I doubt that there are a hundred acres of warm, dry, gravelly or sandy soil east of the Alleghanies that would not amply reward a similar application. But Ashes in quantity are unattainable, since no good farmer sells them, and Coal is the chief fuel of cities and villages. The Marls of New-Jersey I judge fully equal in average value to Ashes which have been nearly deprived of their potash by leaching, but not quite half equal, bushel for bushel, to unleached Ashes. I judge that average Marl is worth 10 cents per bushel where Ashes may be had for 25. But Marl is found only in a few localities, and a material worth but 10 cents per bushel will not bear transportation beyond 40 miles by wagon or 200 by water. Salt is only found or made at a few points, and is too dear for general use as a fertilizer. Where the refuse product of Salt-Works can be cheaply bought, good farmers will eagerly compete for it, if their lands at all resemble mine. I judge the tun of Potash I ordered fifteen years ago from Syracuse, paying $50 and transportation, was the cheapest fertilizer I ever bought. It was so impregnated with Salt (from the boiling over of the salt-kettles into the ashes) as to be worthless for other than agricultural purposes; but I mixed it with a large pile of Muck that I had recently dug, and, six or eight months thereafter, applied the product to a very poor, gravelly hill-side which I had just broken up; and the immediate result was a noble crop of Corn. That hill-side has not yet forgotten the application.

– If I should try to explain just how and why Lime is a fertilizer, I should probably fail; and I am well assured that liming has in some cases been overdone; yet I think most observers will concur in my statement that any region which has been limed year after year produces crops of noticeable excellence. I cite as examples Chester and Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania, with Stark and adjacent counties of Ohio. Possibly, results equally gratifying might be secured by applying some other substance; I only know that frequently limed lands are generally good lands, as their crops do testify. I heartily wish that the flat clay intervales of Western Vermont could have a fair trial of the virtues of liming. I should expect to see them thereby rendered friable and arable; no longer changing speedily from the semblance of tar to that of brick, but readily plowed and tilled, and yielding liberally of Grain as well as Grass. I am confident that most farms in our country will pay for liming to the extent of fifty bushels per acre where the cost of quick-lime does not exceed ten cents per bushel; and most farmers, by taking, hot from the kiln, the refuse lime that is deemed unfit for building purposes, can obtain it cheaper than that.

I wish some farmer who gives constant personal attention to his work – as I cannot – would make some careful tests of the practical value of alkalis. For instance: the abundance and tenacity of our common sorrel is supposed to indicate an acid condition of the soil; and all who have tried it know that sorrel is hard to kill by cultivation. I suggest that whoever is troubled with it should cover two square rods with one bushel of quick-lime just after plowing and harrowing this Spring; then apply another bushel to four square rods adjacent; then make similar applications of ashes to two and four square rods respectively, taking careful note of the boundaries of each patch, and leaving the rest of the field destitute of either application. I will not anticipate the result: more than one year may be required to evolve it; but I am confident that a few such experiments would supply data whereof I am in need; and there are doubtless others whose ignorance is nearly equal to mine.

Many have applied Lime to their fields without realizing any advantage therefrom. In some cases, there was already a sufficiency of this ingredient in the soil, and the application of more was one of those many wasteful blunders induced by our ignorance of Chemistry. But much Lime is naturally adulterated with other minerals, especially with Manganese, so that its application to most if not to all soils subserves no good end. In the absence of exact, scientific knowledge, I would buy fifty bushels of quick-lime, apply them to one acre running through a field, and watch the effect. If it doesn't pay, you have a bad article, or your soil is not deficient in Lime.

XIX.

SOILS AND FERTILIZERS

A farmer is a manufacturer of articles wherefrom mankind are fed and clad; his raw materials are the soil and the various substances he mingles therewith or adds thereto in order to increase its productive capacity. His art consists in transforming by cultivation crude, comparatively worthless, and even noxious, offensive materials into substances grateful to the senses, nourishing to the body, and sometimes invigorating, even strengthening, to the mind.

I have heard of lands that were naturally rich enough; I never was so lucky or perchance so discerning as to find them. Yet I have seen Illinois bottoms whereof I was assured that the soil was fully sixteen feet deep, and a rich, black alluvium from top to bottom; and I do not question the statements made to me from personal observation that portions of the strongly alkaline plain or swale on which Salt Lake City is built, being for the first time plowed, irrigated, and sown to Wheat, yielded ninety bushels of good grain per acre. I never saw, yet on evidence believe, that pioneer settlers of the Miami Valley, wishing, some years after settling there, to sell their farms, advertised them as peculiarly desirable in that the barns stood over a creek or "branch," which swept away the manure each Winter or Spring without trouble to the owner; and I have myself grown both Wheat and Oats that were very rank and heavy in straw, yet which fell so flat and lay so dead that the heads scarcely bore a kernel. Had I been a wiser, better farmer, I should have known how to stiffen the straw and make it do its office, in spite of wind and storm.

[And let me here say, lest I forget it in its appropriate place, that I am confident that most farmers sow grain too thickly for any but very poor land. If one thinks it necessary to scatter three bushels of Oats per acre, I tell him that he should apply more manure and less seed – that land which requires three bushels of seed is not rich enough to bear Oats. He might better concentrate his manure on half so much land, and save two-thirds of his seed.]

I do not hold that the remarkably rich soils I have instanced needed fertilizing when first plowed; I will presume that they did not. Yet, having never yet succeeded in manuring a corn-field so high that a few loads more would not (I judge) have increased the crop, I doubt whether even the richest Illinois bottoms would not yield more Corn, year by year, if reënforced with the contents of a good barn-yard. And, when the first heavy crop of Corn has been taken from a field, that field – no matter how deep and fertile its soil – is less rich in corn-forming elements than it was before. Just so sure as that there is no depletion or shrinkage when nothing is taken from nothing, so sure is it that something cannot be taken from something without diminishing its capacity to yield something at the next call. Rotation of crops is an excellent plan; for one may flourish on that which another has rejected; but this does not overbear Nature's inflexible exaction of so much for so much. Hence, if there ever was a field so rich that nothing could be added that would increase its productive capacity, the first exacting crop thereafter taken from it diminished that capacity, and rendered a fresh application of some fertilizer desirable.