The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1867-09-20
Home. Made. Concentrated Manure.

Home. Made ConcentI ated Elanurcs.
How, deplorable is the improvidence,
or negligence, or ignorance, call it what
you will, of many of our farmers and
planters, who give ruinOus prices for
concentrated manures of doubtful value,
while they are surrounded at home with
all the materials for making on their
own farms, at half the cost, better art
icle than they can purchase from the
manufacturers We could point to
many homestead in Maryland and Yir-
ginia, around which the ashes from the
dwelling and quarters have been accum-
ulating for half a century without being
turned to account, and yet good farmers
at the North are glad to give ten cents
per bushel for wood ashes and haul them
ten miles. The wonders wrought by
Colonel Capron fifteen years ago in the
Improvement of poor lands around
Laurel factory, between Baltimore
and Washington, are due to the
application of wood ashes brought
from a distance of twenty miles.
How rarely is the carcass of any do
mestic animal converted into manure
and yet.a dead horse will make a cord
of the best manure, abounding in nitro
gen, and fully worth ten dollars. How
often, in riding across the country, do
we see the skeletons of horses and cat
tie bleaching in useless decay? And
yet, many farmer gives, or complains
he cannot give, fifty cents bushel for
bone dust, when he could make it himself
at twenty-five, simply by letting the
loafers in his vicinity know that he
will give half cent per pound for old
bones We remember seeing on the
road between Culpepper Court House
and Woodville a huge golgotha accumu-
lated in this way, and the bones, we
were told, were dissolved in weak So
luton of sulphuric acid and mixed with
woods earth, producing homemade
concentrated manure superior to the hest
Prurian guano, and at half the cost.
The annexed on this subject was com
municated to that able journal, the
Southern Cultirdtor, by correspondent
whose appreciation of that noble old
Roman, Governor Wise, cannot exceed
our own:
In January, 1866, wrote to Col. Nat.
Tyler, of the Richmond Enquirer, re-
specting the commercial manures to be
had in that locality. He handed my
letter to General Wise, to whom itInade
reference in another connection, but
who replied 10 this part of it in this
wise. / extract from his letter as
favor to your readers:
"You can't have the concentrated
manures sent to yon, as you propose, ut
five times their value. Make your OlcR
manure A pit two feet deep, eight by
ten square-the bottom made firm and |
inclining to one corner; at the lower !
corner place reservoir, sunk below the |
corner, to catch the fluid percolating
through composts in pit; in that reser-
voir tix hand pump; cever the pit by
a roof on posts seven feet high above !
ground; then i'm the bottom of the pit |
lay muck eight inches thick; then cover
the muck with the manure, four inches |
thick; then muck again eight inches, |
and then manure four inches; and so Oh |
until you reach up four feet high or |
four nd half, and then top off with |
muck-Hlaek at the top and bottom.
On the top put trough or shallow |
tray, with holes in the bottom; this |
tray, the same size of your compost I
heap, say-eight feet long, four feet wide |
and four and half feet high--a full
cord of more than one hundred and I.
.twenty-eight cubic feet. Then dissolve /,
one bushel of salt in just water enough to !
dissolve it. Pour that brine in reser- |
voir: then dissolve three bushels of lime |
in water to make a strong milk Of lime. |
II l. -, L., Il.
voir, aud mix them we'll. Then put
your tray on the compost heap, and |
pump the salt mixture into the tray, and |
let the mixture percolate through the |
compost. 1t will run back into the |
reservoir, and can be repumped, say
once every two days, and in six days
you will have acord Of manure equdI 10
gHdRO." u. ..t
shall try this process in the fall sea-
son. l know personally that eX-Gover-
nor Wise is one of the best Informed and I
practical men in America. 1t strikes
me, however, that the process he de-
scribes may be advantageOusly dis
pensed with, by making the compost
heaps in the open field, and mixing the
salt and lime mixture with the muck
and manure, as the layers are put into
the pens, and leaving them well cover
ed, to be used on the ground at plant
ing time. His process is indispensable
to making commercial manure for
transportation.
j suggest. it is not improbable that
the same end Of enriching the soil
might be more advantageously attained
by putting the muck and manure in the
open furrow at once, pouring the mix
ture upon it, and covering it up with q
turn plow. The whole subject is sug-
gestiye, and may prompt practical ex-
| periments nf yalne