Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1857-08-27
From the Cotton Planter and Soil.
SYSTEM OF COMPOST MANURING.

SYSTEM OF COMPOST MANURlNG.
Dear Sir: Having taken the Cotton
Planter from the first number, and having
been requested by you to give my experience
in the farm through its columns, have done
so with no ordinary pleasure, in plain,
practical way; and thank you and others
for your kind expressions Of approval from
time to time, of my poor services in the
great cause Of our country's Agricultural SAL
vation. Every man who has soul in his
body, can but feel grateful to those who
cheer him along through the rugged path of
life. What a dreary desert life's voyage
would be if destitute of here and there a
bright spot!
I notice of late an unusual interest mani
tested in the various Agricultural Journals,
on the subject of manure making, and the
improvement of the hills of our "land OF
flowers" This manifestation, no doubt, is
gratifying to you and to all those who wish
we'll their country and their posterity. Some,
I see, are just about to commence system
of composing, and to those wish to say
word. There are two things, at least, in
dispensable to success in mauuring. First ::
make. your compost as near the field where
you expect to apply it as possible, and save
the labor and expense of carting. No sys-
tenn of manuring will pay where it has to be
}carted from one or two points to the whole
plantation. 1t is just as easy to make ma
nure in the field or near it, as it is to make
it all in the horse lot and barn yard. Ma
nure may be made in the horse lot and sta
'bles, and barn yard for the fields which sur
round them. But if you wish, at your ear
liest convenience, and at the least trouble,
to manure every field far and near, while you
are pasturing those fields, construct stock
lots on the highest points, into which haul
leaves, corn stalks and straw, on which new
er fail to pen your stock every night; and
when you have composted enough for that
hill, remove the lot to some other point, and
repeat the process. When your compost is
thus made, rake it into large bulks, and
plow your lots, and with the loose earth thus
plowed, cover your manure banks and let
them remain until you wish to use them, and
you will find that you have fine lot of most
excellent "Georgia Guano," right in the
feld, where it is needed, which may be car
ted out with rush, and at less than half
the time and trouble which it ordinarily
costs. By this system I can see in my
minds eye, plantation improved, and dis
cover upon the red hills of the South, luxu-
RANT crops of cotton and grain waving in
beauty, to cheer up the tolls of the Agricul-
turist. 1 have tried the above plan, and
find it to be the very system for a general
wholesale manuring; aud in no other way do
l see that plantation may be improved by
composing in any reasonable time.
The second thing indispensable to the i'm
provement Of land is, to adopt some system
by which your manure applied as above,
may be retained in the soil, and on the Mcn-
tical spot where it is spread. To affect this
object the only plan is to adopt a proper sys-
TEN of Hillside gradc.draining and horizon
tai culture 1t is waste of time to make
and supply manure, and then permit it to
wash away, and get the benefit of it but one
year. G. D. HARMON.
7tica, Hiss, June "a, 1857.