Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-11-06
FALL AND WINTER FLOWING.

FALL AND WINTER FLOWING.
There are so many advantages in
blowing ground in the fall and early in
the winter that they should be often
held up to public view in a farming
community to be seen and considered
as matters of great practical impor-
lance. A volume might be written on
the practice, chemistry and philosophy
of tillage, or stirring the earth with
pillow, harrow, hoe, spade, clod-crusher
and roller, without exhausting the SUBJ
ject. Why is blowing better when done
at one time of the year than at another?
Not many farmers have carefully stud
led this question; yet no one more de-
serves consideration, il we would I'M
derstand the nature of tillage and how
stirring the soil increases its natural
fertility and the crop harvested. The
pillow pulverizes the ground; multiplies
immensely the pores which are open to
receive and hold fall and winter rains.
When this water freezes in titled earth
it expands and still farther separates
particles of the most compact clay, or
clay, sand and vegetable matter When
this ice melts and the water dries out
in part, the plowed soil is exceeding
ly fine and mellow. The mechanl-
cal force Of hard freezing has done fifty
times more good to the farmer by reas-
on of his fall blowing than it would
have done to the same ground if he had
not broken it up till spring, and just
before planting. Flowing is itself a
very plain mechanical operation, and
the expansion of water in changing in
to solid ice is also a mere physical pro-
cess, but one of great power. A ridge
of earth thrown up by the pillow is far
more exposed to cold in winter than it
would be if no blowing had been done;
1t is also more exposed to thaw by ev-
cry warm south wind, and by all sun
shine than it would be if the ground
were fiat and smooth. Hence it follows
that kind nature actually stirs the plow-
ed ground several times for the wise
cultivator during the two months that
precede early planting in the Spring.
Her freezing and thawing and mellow
ing his plowed fields actually cost him
nothing; for the land must be plowed
or no paying crop can be grown.
Having noticed briefly themechanical
results of fall and early winter blowing,
let us give az little attention to
the chemical effects that ac-
crue from the same operation.
The pillow and frost mellow the ground.
Before water leaves these millions of
soil pores they begin to condense at
mospheric air, which has about 81 parts
of oxygen gas in every 100 of air. If
the titled ground had not been made
fine, or pulverized by frost and tillage,
its power of condensing vital air would
not exist. Every farmer should know
that condensed vital air, called oxygen,
is one of the principal sources of the
fruitfulness of our mother earth, and
that stirring and tiIling the ground con-
denses this gas in its pores, from which
result the most important chemical and
vital actions. Condensed oxygen at
tacks carbon in vegetable mold, and
forms carbonic acid, which dissolved in
water and added to that which exists
naturally in the atmosphere, enables
this water to dissolve common lime
rock, and many silicates, and other
minerals which form ashes when crops
are burnt. If plant food were soluble
in water like common salt, epson and
glauber salts, these fertilizers would
dissolve entirely in a few hard rains,
run into rivers and the sea, leaving all
islands and continents perfectly barren.
1t would not do to have limestone,
granite, syenite, gneis, slate and other
rocks, nor their debris, any
more soluble in water than they now
are for the common good of plants and
animals, with reasoning, industrious
man at their head. There is work for
his hands, and work for his intellect.
In the infancy of mankind, when their
numbers are few as compared with the
vast area Of the earth's arabic surface,
manual labor in agriculture is sufficient;
but in time science becomes indispensa-
bic. AT this time it is needed most to
recuperate impaired fertility. ThOus-
ands run to fresh lands to escape the
expensive purchase of fertilisers for old
fields long under the pillow. Some strike
boldly into the subsoil and often with
marked success. Others find great
benefit in the use of clover, rest plaster
and some manure. A good turf to turn
up with the pillow to rot through the
winter for corn or cotton is very desir-
able. To command this more land
ought to be seeded in orchard grass,
red-top, timothy, and oat grass in the
South. Georgia has nearly four mil
lion acres in corn and cotton which
consume vegetable mold.
WINTERING BEES.