The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-06-11 00:00:00

MISCELLANEA.

The Economy of Manure is deservedly engaging the
attention of farmers at the present time. It may be in-
ferred from a late interesting lecture by Professor Way
that a clay soil is an efficient retainer of ammonia, and
when it is generated by the decomposition of manures
buried in the soil, it is absorbed and held there until re-
quired as food for the next crop, and that sandy and cal-
careous soils possess this property in a much lower degree.
These facts, which have been proved by careful investiga-
tion, appear to coincide with the experience that heavy
soils do not require applications of manure so frequently
as those of a light and porous nature, and that a naked
fallow is highly beneficial to the following crop on a strong
clay ; whereas the light soils lose by long exposure a great
part of the soluble matter they contain. It follows then
that manures, either in a solid or liquid form, may safely
be applied to land containing a fair proportion of clay, a
considerable time before the sowing of the crop. As most
soils possess the power of retaining the valuable portions
of manure as they are evolved by decomposition, which
discovery exhibits a beautiful provision in nature, how
does it happen that we do not apply it to the land before
it has sustained the great loss which often occurs during
fermentation in the heap, and drainage during4he process ?
And with regard to liquid manure, if applied in the recent
state, though its operation may not be so immediate, I do
not see why it should not be as effectual, unless the nitro-
genous susstances from which the ammonia is produced
are more liable to suffer loss after being mixed with the
eoil than ammonia itself, being formed previously by fer-
mentation ; or it may be that a more favourable combina-
tion of particles is induced by fermentation than by the
slow decomposition which takes place in the soil. Perhaps
some of your readers will be kind enough to explain the
difference in the effects of these two kinds of decomposi-
tion, and also of their experience in the application of
artificial modes of fixing ammonia. It is not always con-
venient, even if it should be proved desirable, to apply
manure immediately it is produced, and perhaps there is
no better way of preserving it than by throwing it up into
a compact heap, rounded at the top, and covered with soil
one or two inches in thickness, preserving the drainage by
channels leading to a cask sunk in tho ground. By this
method, the loss, though not entirely avoided, would per-
haps be less than than the expense of obtaining other
means.—Agricultural Gazette.
Transplanting Veyetables.—When the season arrives
for transplanting broccolies and other vegetables, I gently
raise the seed-beds with a potato fork. so as to spring the
roots of the plants. I then water with a rosed watering-
pot, and in ten or fifteen days, as circumstances permit,
I water again, raise, draw, and plant; watering the bed
if more plants were wanted for another period. Celery,
endive, lettuces, flower beds, seed pots (with proper
instruments), I have treated as above ; and the plan may
be extented to strawberry runners for potting or for
rows ; carrots, onions, beet, and turnips ; also to forest
trees, shrubs, and grain, if it is desirous to increase any
particular sort, such as the Peruvian barley imported by
Lord Lonsdale.—T. Torbron, Lower Tottenham.—
Gardners' Chronicle.