RENOVATING EXHAUSTED LAND.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1858, 6 February 1880, Page 3

RENOVATING EXHAUSTED LAND.

The "Country Gentleman,” one of the leading American agricultural journals, gives some useful hints upon this subject, which are worthy of attention by colonial farmers : —"Red clover, lime, and gypsum are by far the cheapest fertilisers within our reach. It is not essential that the coat of green clover be ploughed under in early or midsummer, as some imagine. I would never advise it, for the reasons that you only turn water under and lay bare the soil to rain, sun, and wind. The office of clover is to shade the ground, protect it from a burning sun, warning rains, and wind. In so doing, the ammonia, which is in constant process of creation,, is protected and retained. It is to vegetable life what blood is to animal life, and therein lies the marvellous effect a dense, heavy coat of clover has on the ensuing crop. The effect depends in a very slight degree upon the roots, stems, or blades, which some suppose to be the agency. Then it is clear that the clover should in some form remain as a cover to the ground, until the last day before ploughing for the corn crop which should follow. If in June it is cut off for hay it soon rallies, and affords shelter, and should not be pastured, if the aim is to get the soil in good heart for a crop. The ensuing summer, if it is desired to sow wheat, plough it down a few weeks before seeding time, and that is the time to scatter the lime over the ploughed ground, having then plenty of vegetable matter to decompose, to prepare it for food for the wheat plant. Then sow a peck of clover seed per acre on the wheat in April following, In May or early June the gypsum is usually sown when there is a still, damp morning, two or three pecks to the acre being enough. Its use lies in fixing the ammonia, retaining it, and attracting the carbolic acid gas from the air. Gypsum is in sense food for plants, but is highly useful in concentrating other elements. Such a rotation with inexpensive manures, such as 100 bushels of lime per acre, a peck of clover seed and gypsum will, in every instance, bring up land if it is not too wet or ondrained, and is far more durable and far less expensive than by the use of phosphate, guano, or other mineral preparations, which are only within the reach of wealthy amateur farmers, and require renewed applications each crop, whereas land restored by the use of lime and clover does not require lime again for many years. This line of treatment has never failed to bring up land to a highly productive standard, and it is not attended with much outlay of cash. Everything but the trifling cost of gypsum is usually produced on the land by the labours of the farmer and family. Hundreds of worn-out farms have been rescued from dilapidation and ruin. It is an accepted truism that as long as ‘clover will catch.’ the farm can soon be restored to paying fertility, and by such rotation is even getting more productive and profitable, for after some years of such treatment the land will bear harder farming; that is, two or three crops may succeed a good coat of clover before laying down to clover again. Rough new land should be subdued by the use of the large (some call it English) clover. Nothing else so effectually rots out stumps and kills weeds and sprouts, and prepares the land for the plough and good-paying crops. Wild new lands should always have it sown on the first grain crop grown. It saves a vast amount of labour, for in a few years it so tames the ground, and clears it of enemies to the plough, that it works like old ground, and is good for full crops. One great error is often fallen into, and is following the old tradition, that a bushel of clover-seed will do for eight acres. That may have been enough to clover the land partially when it was new, but whoever aims at getting np his land in a speedy and profitable way, should sow a bushel on four acres, so that his land may be thoroughly shaded.”