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Clover.
Where, os is invariably trie ease
on our Southern plantations, there is
but little stock in proportion to the
number of acres in cultivation, and
even that little is never housed in the
Winter, it is out of the question to
talk of collecting manure sufficient to
manure our wide fields of corn and
cotton. We cannot keep on raising
crops year after year without manure.
We cannot afford to buy the artificial
manures in greater quantities than
just enough to whip the land into a
temporary fertility, and tho conse¬
quence is that some remedy must be
applied, or our land must soon sink to
barrenness. The remedy is at hand,
and wc can reach it. It is cheap,
easy of application and effective. It
is red clover. Its advantages are
just discovered, and we are beginning
to use them when the necessity for
such an agent has become most
urgent. A few pounds of diminu¬
tive seed furnish machinery to absorb
from the atmosphere and pump out of
the earth the elements of fertility
needed to replace what our wasteful
and improvident predecessors have
expended. The plants supplied with
power to convert carbon and oxygon
into solid matter in their, leaves and
stalks, deposit this in the soil when
they fall and decay, and thus draw
from the atmosphere tons of the
purest fertilizers fresh from nature’s
laboratory and place them exactly
where they arc needed to promote the
growth of future crops. Nor are the
stems and leaves of clover the only
agents engaged in this beneficent
work. The roots are constantly at
work boring deep in the soil in every
<* direction, pumping out water and
various minerals held in solution,
mixing and as-simulating them, and
uniting them in the most nutritive
form in the stems of the plants with
the materials derived from the at¬
mosphere, and thus preparing a com¬
pound in which silica, lime, potash,
soda, magnesia, etc., are mixed with
carbon, oygen, and nitrogen, con¬
stituting a more “perfect manure”
than the most learned chemist can
ever prepare. The roots of a good
acre of clover, if dried and freed
from all earthy ^natter would weigh,
it is said, fully two tons. Add to
these an equal weight of stems and
leaves, and here we have from a few
pounds of seed four tons per acre of
the best of all manures drawn from
the air and the recesses of the soil,
exactly adapted for the nutriment of
future crops.
And this is not all. While this
vast amount of manure is in pro¬
cess of collection and composition
the roots have penotrated and loosened
the soil over its entire breadth, ad
- mitting air and warmth, and manipu¬
lating, as it were, the hitherto latent
mineral ingredients which it contains,
until its whole character 1> comes
changed.
I solemnly believe that in the
benign providence of God, clover is
to he the Moses which is to deliver
the Southern agriculturists from the
bondage of poverty and debt by re¬
storing our wasted and worn in¬
heritance to its original fertility.
Now is the lime, Mr. Editor, to pre¬
pare for sowing clover. Let us claim
its benefits so far as our means will
allow. Trefoil, in Ex.
Green Manuring.
Mr. Editor —Every farmor of in¬
telligence who has given tho subject
any attention, and who has tested it
by actual experiment, will agree that
plowing under green crops is ono of
tho best, if not the very best, ways of
enriching land. I am ertain that
vegetable matter applied to and
mixed with the soil is far more dur¬
able in its effects than any animal
manure; that it produces a more
permanent humus and moro of it, and
that it tends in a higher degree to
enrich the soil for future crops.
Green manuring is certainly tho
cheapest mode of onriching land, and
when tho want of a cheap, durable,
and effective manure is so generally
felt by all upland cultivators, it seems
to me that I cannot do a better service
than by drawing attention to the great
advantages of plowing in growing
plants. all bauds
Clover is admitted on to
be the best crop to plow under in a
green state, because in addition to
the large quantity of rich vegetable
matter which it incorporates with
the soil, its roots penetrating to agreat
depth in every direction act as the
beRt kind of subsoilcr, admitting air,
heat and moisture, and keeping the
soil constantly loose. But for those
who cannot afford-, or will not take the
trouble to plant clover, cow-peas
will be found an excellent substitute.
Rye and oats may bo plowed under
with great advantage, and even
weeds will be very beneficial if care
be taken to turn them in when they
bloom and before they have matured
their seeds. I saw in a number of
the Farm and Home , (l think it
was the January number,) a' letter
from a Mississippi correspondent,
that the common dog-fenuel plowed
under in a green state had been
found a valuable manure on some
poor upland in Panola county, I can
fully corroborate this statement, and
can add that there are many other
weeds which are now left to grow and
multiply themselves to the injury of
all crops, which if turned under and
incorporated with the soil at the
proper time, would increase its humus
and organic matter and improve its
texture, while the operation would
destroy the present crop of weeds and
prevent a new crop of them. If this
were done in the right way and at tho
proper time, there are thousands of
acres now waste, productive only of
noxious weeds which seed and dis¬
seminate themselves all over the cul¬
tivated lands, whioh could be restored
to fertility and made valuable.
Iu Europe green manuring is a
universal practice, because experience
has fully' demonstrated its value.
C. C. H., in Ex.
Attala Co., Miss., Aug., 1872.
The greatest nutmeg ever known
met with a grater.
Fall Plowing.
One of the greatest defects of the
present system of husbandry in the
South, is the almost total absence of
Fall plowing. Not one farmer in a
thousand ever thinks of plowing the
land in the Fall which he is going to
put in corn and cotton next Spring
If it has been in small grain this year
the grass and stubble arc either dc
astured so closely as to be perfectly death
are until a calfwould starve to
on it, or the grass and weeds are
allowed to grow and wither, as if to
exhaust the soil as much as possible,
and return nothing to it which can
possibly restore any part of the fer¬
tility of which it has been derived.
Bad* as this is, however, it is better
than the pasturing plan.
If our farmers would take the ad¬
vice you have frequently given them
iu the Farm and Home, namely' :
To sow cow-peas on the stubble just
after the grain is taken off, plow
them in, turning the stubbie under at
the samy time ; then, before frost,
plow the vines under with a good coat¬
ing of quick-lime on them to facilitate
decomposition, and leave the laud
thus exposed to the mellowing in¬
fluences of the Winter frosts, they
would soon find that their corn-cribs
and gin-houses were fuller than before,
that they would not be so “run to
death” in tho Spring preparing for
planting, and that they could plant
much earlier, and thus gain time for
plant-growth and aerating, aud
hasten the maturity of their crops.
I look upon a Fall plowing—turn¬
ing under the green growtli while it is
still green and exposing the soil to
tho Winter freezes—as equal to a
good coat of manure, apart from the
advantages of early preparation .
There is no excuse for email not doing
this as to land occupied by grain
crops. These crops cornc off early iu
June, and there is plenty' of time to
turn under the stubble, and cross¬
plow the land again before frost, if
we would only try to find it, and
would recognize the value of the
operation. for leaving'
There is more reason
our corn-fields with tho withered
stalks, and the frost-bitten tufts of
grass standing all the Winter, because
when the corn and fodder are removed,
the bauds and teams are generally'
occupied picking market. and preparing But the
cotton crop for even
here time could be found by judicious
management to turn these stalks aud
grass uuder, aud leave the corn-fields
to become enriched, loose and friable,
by tho active influences of the rains
unu frosts of Winter.
The habit of letting cattle ruu
loose in tho fields all the Winter
under the pretext that they arc find¬
ing pasture is an absolute barbarism.
It does great injury to the land and
it is a slow mode of starving the
wretched cattle to death.
I hold, Mr. Editor, that good pre¬
paration of the land is more than
half the battle of crop-raising, and
that poor crops are mostly the result
of poor preparation, although the
“seasons” generally conic iu her the
blame. \\ ere I to work poor land
be obliged to select manure wilh-
°ut Fall plowing or Fall plowing
without manure, in the preparation Spring, of 1
the soil for planting in
should choose the latter always, ami
be sure that I would come out ahead
of those who relied on the former.
I believe in stirring the soil, let¬
ting the air, light, and, moisture
penetrate and circulate through it,
and deposit -there the stores of fer¬
tility which the atmosphere so bounti¬
fully supplies for plant-food.
• 1'lowboy.
Middle Tennessee, August, 1872.
From Our Ilomo Journal.
How to Save Good Fodder.
1 had been in the practice all my
life, until two or three years ago, Of
binding my fodder in small hand bun¬
dles, which J stuck on to the corn¬
stalks to cure, as is most generally
practised by farmers, and always bad
more or less molded fodder, except
when the season was unusually good
for the business.
I had frequently beard persons
speak of a different plan, which was
to give the small ends of the blades,
when a handful was gathered, a little
twist and press it slightly down be¬
tween the ear and the stalk and bend
the stalk down over it, and it will
cure in one-half or two thirds the time
required when it is bound in bundles.
I practice this plan now and tiud it
facilitates the gathering, rather than
being more tedious, as 1 had thought
before trying it. 1 cannot gather it
up, when cured, quite so fast as when
it is bound in small bundles, but the
tiino saved whilo gathering more
than makes up for this loss; besides
this, I lose little or no fodder at all,
but it is all free from mould, sound
and sweet. I find also thut the wind
does not blow down so much of it,
neither docs the rain injure it half so
much, as it will dry in two or three
hours sun. It is also much more con¬
venient. for feeding, as but one band
is to be broken. M. S. Hamilton.
White Oak , Jefferson County ,. 1 rk
June 15.
* ♦ ♦- --------
Said Anders >n, of England, more
than forty years ago : “One thousand
sheep, folded on an acre of ground one
day, would manure it sufficiently to
feed one thousand and one sheep. So
that by this process, land which tin;
first year can feud only one thousand
sheep, may the next year, as a result
of their own droppings, feed 1,305.
Fine, well-tilled soil als< ibs im-i.-t
ure from both above and below, and
saves it for the use of plants, when a
hard, lumpy soil will net retain it
- - • * «
Duration of Incubation .—If cum’
eggs hatch iu lrom nineteen to twen¬
ty-one days. Turkeys, from twcnly
six to twcnty-uinc days. Guinea
fowls, from twenty-five to twenty
seven days. Pea-fowls, twenty eight
to thirty days. Ducks, twenty-eight
days. Geese, thirty days.
----- • --------
Live Stock. —Stock is unprece¬
dentedly low, and it doesn’t, jay to
keep poor animals when good ones can
bo bought at such reasonable prices.