HOW TO APPLY MANURE TO FIELDS.

Southland Times, Issue 1253, 20 May 1870, Page 3

HOW TO APPLY MANURE TO FIELDS.

As this is the season for carting out manure in the stubble-fields, we shall glance very briefly at the way in which this should be left. The point is much disputed as to whether it is best to plough the dung into the soil in the autumn, or to spread it on the surface of the same, allowing it to lie all the winter and be ploughed in at spring time. We put out of court altogether the practice of carting the dung into the fields, placing it in heaps, and then allowing those heaps to lie all the wiater, or at least a portion of it. The practice of spreading the manure on the soil, and allowing it to lie all winter, ploughing it in in spring, meets with the approval, not only of practical men (whose opinion is worth listening to, if not of following), but also of high scientific authority. One of our agricultural savants who recommends this practice, ' maintains that, being washed into the soil ! by the rains, it is much more uniformly j distributed than by ploughing it in. Now, before being washed in, it may happen (as in practice, in fact, it does happen) that a long tack of dry weather takes place after the manure will be spread on the surface ; and in this case the manure is placed in the very worst position for returning its fertilising constituents, for the ammonia must be distributed in the air. That it is so, our olfactory sense tells us in crossing a field treated in thia way. If we are told to keep our manure in covered pits, in the farm steading, in order to prevent the ammonia from being dissipated in the air, how can we reconcile this with the advice to spread it out upon the surface of our fields, and allow of its exposure for weeks, if not for months, to the action of the air ? For our part, we would rather not trust to the matter of fertility present in the dung being washed into the soil. We would then be inclined to allow the general practice of ploughing in the manure to the soil as Bhortly after it is spread on the surface as possible to be persisted in as the safest. Where manure, during the frosty weather of winter months, when the fields are hard-surfaced and the roads good for cartage, is carted on to the field, we would most strongly urge the plan to be followed of making a manure pit or .pits as closely in accordance with the principles we have indicated. We should even advise the farmer to go to some trouble and some expense in preparing a pit for the manure, if not to make a special one. At all events,;; the site of the pit should be carefully tammed close, if not puddled with retentive clay, to prevent the liquid, which is of highmanurial value, being allowed to soak away into the soil. To secure this, the best way will be to make an excavation of some 18 to 24 inches deep, with sides and ends sloping inwards towards the centre, ramming the soil well up, or, as above stated, puddling it. It will be a good plan to spread a bottom layer of compost manure into which the liquid will soak ; this being in spring thoroughly well mixed with the manure placed above it. The foundation being thus prepared, the manure may be carted to the pit, from the t steading, and laid in it in uniform layers. If the heap cannot be finished at once, each time it is left, a thin layer of soil should be spread over the whole surface. When the heap is finished, it should be properly shaped, ridge fashion, and the surface covered with sofl. — Mark Lane Express.