Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1870-03-28
naiIp 3Sennebee Nournal.
PROFIT OF MANURES.

How many farmers continue TO work
their farms without profit, for the want OF
n sufficient amount of fertilizers, and
many, too, whose income from other
sources than their farms, enables them
every wear to loan something on mortage.
Nine-tenths of their time and energies
are spent in filling the poor hungry farm,
to prevent its running them in debt, and
still they are unwilling to invest a single
dollar in the purchase OF manure, to be re-
funded with quadruple interest in single
season.
What would be said Of a merchant who
should loan so much of his capital on BOND
and mortgage, that he had not sufficient
means to keep the necessary stock OF
goods to supply his customers? And why
should the farmer loan his money to others
at six.or eight per cent. per annum, when
he could earn a profit, in addition to the
interest, by using it himself? When a
farmers income is truly in excess of the
wants of his farm, then he is consulting
his best interest by investing his money
where it may be used by others for his
benefit; but until his own business is
properly cared for, he is wrong to part
with the means necessary to its success.
SO long as further additions of manure
will increase the product beyond cost, the
farmer should continue to increase the
quantity used: and if he cannot do so by
any other means, he should reduce the
quantity of land titled.
The amount of manure which Is used
with profit, in some cases; would greatly
astonish many farmers who are ac-
custemed to keep their crops on low
diet and reap harveSts in proportion.
Hear what Peter Henderson, one Of the
most successful, money making gardeners
in the United States, says in his book en-
titled Gardening for Profit: >
alt is grave blunder to attempt to
grow vegetable crops without the use of
manures Of the various kinds. | never
vet saw soils of any kind that had borne
crop of vegetables that would produce as
good crop the next season without the
use of manure, no matter how rich the soil
may be thought to be. An illustration OF
this came under my observation last
season. One of my neighbors, market
gardener of twenty years experience, and
whose grounds have always been per-
feet model of productiveness, had 1t in
prospect TO run a sixty foot street through
his grounds thinking his land sufficient
ly rich to carry through crop of cab
bages without manure, he thought it use
less to waste money by using guano on
that portion on which the street was to
be, but on each side sowed guano at the
rate of twelve hundred pounds per acre.
and planted the whole with early cab
bages. The effect was the most marked
| ever saw that portion on which the
guano had been used sold off readily at
twelve dollars per hundred, or $l40O per
acre, both price and crop being more than
an average but the portion from which
the guano had been withheld hardly
averaged three dollars per hundred. The
street occHpied fully an acre of ground,
SO that my friend actually lost over $1,000
in crop, by Withholding $50 for manure.
Another neighbor with lease only one
year to run, also unwisely concluded that
it would be foolish to waste manure on
his last crop, and so planted and sowed
all without ; the result was, as his ex-
perience should have taught him, crop
of inferior quality in every article grown,
and loss on his eight acres of probably
$1,000 for that season.