MANURE WASTED

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 314, 23 October 1860, Page 3

MANURE WASTED

We believe we are correct in saying that it is a common practice on some farms; eveu to the present time, when farmers should be trying to make the soil yield as much as possible, to burn regularly and carefully, not only the stubble land after harvest, but the straw from which the grain has been thrashed. It is nothiug new for one hundred tons of straw to be thus consumed in a day, or at once. In some parts of America the farmers grow clover for the express purpose of ploughing it down, in order to nourish^, wheat crop which is next sowu. After tite wheat crop, the land is fallowed for one year, then sowu with clover again ; thus oue ciop ou'.y is obtained in three years. In Australia, where vegetable ma;ter docs not exist in the soil in such quantities as in America, the farmer ought to secure all the benefit he can from the decomposition of stubb c and the unmarketable straw raised from year to year. Ii 13 by such short-sighted conduct that the richest soils must soon become comparatively worthless. Now, if vegetable matter, instead of being burned, and the ashes even as at. present, left unused, were ploughed in, especially if deeply covered, the following chemical action would take place:—A portion of the hydrogen of the deoayiug vegetable substances would combine with the nitrogen of the air, thus formui'-' ammonia. Another substance, humic acid, would be at the same time formed, which would absorb and retain the ammonia, until it, or rather both could be taken up as food by the roots of plants. There is not the slightest donbt that the Ame" can farmers, who practise the abovs mentibned rotation, obtain one crop in three years sufficiently remunerative, principally by the aid of ammonia, is formed during and by decomposition of the vegetable matter in the soil, including not merely the dense foliage of the crop, but a great mass of roots that have penetrated deep into the ground. We hope that the days are nearly over for continuing such waste as has hitherto been much practised, and that wHeu the steam threshing machine has in future done its work, steps will be taken to make the best use of the straw that is fit only fir manure, by forming compost heaps, or artifical nitre-beds, by the admixture of calcareous matter, or animal substances from the farm, In this way, by a little extra labour, a little extra outlay, or perhaps by the judicious employment of time in the less busy seasons of the year, improving farmers will produce the very sub-, stances, at the present time recommended in England as the best means of pushing ou the growth of grass to save the stock from starvation.— Victorian Farmer's Journal.