The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-12-03

broken with two-horse Watt plough
and part with the ordinary (singlt
horse) southern halfshovel This
/ was an experiment as to the effect o.
! using different ploughs. | was very
ignorant of all farm matters except
stock natural taste and surroundings
had given me knowledge of cattle.
mules and horses. OF hogs and sheer
| had yet to learn. In the neighbor-
hood, there was great difference OF
opinion as to whether deep ploughing
(Which with us means about six inches)
or shallow ploughing (three or four
inches in depth was best suited to our
clay soils. Most southern farmers
ploughed in the old way, and many OF
them made good crops. Some of the
northern immigrants followed the
southern fashion others, like myself,
experimental cautiously, and in one or
two cases a double pillow was used upon
a EghtsOil, with a sandy subsoil, making
it for some years less fertile than when
only the top soil was stirred.
A CASE FOR DEEP PLoUGHING.
If there was any one thing | was
sure of as certainly suited to the long,
dry summers of South Carolina up
lands, / should have said subsoil plough
ing was that thing. So | SUBSIDIZED all
my cotton ground in March; put on
most Of it about two hundred pounds
of an approved commercial fertilizer
to the acre, bedded-thus burying my
manure about five inches deep-and on
the 10Th of April | planted my seed
with Dow Law planter. Three acres
and a half of the nineteen acres had
been a peach orchard; this | treated
differently. In the previous October
(beingsatisfed that the orchard was too
old to be proftable), l had the trees
dug up, piled, and during the winter
burned, roots and all. Now my nearest
neighbOr, from whom l purchased my
farm, told me that he had never sue
ceeded in making anything grow on
that ground except peaches. He had
planted it in corn, which died of some
mysterious trouble when about three
feet in height; later, he sowed oats,
which had a similar fate at much less
altitude. This was unpromising. On
examination of thesoil, found it on the
surface like a bed of ashes. When
you walked over it, you broke through
a sort of crust your shoes were COW
cred with a grey, powdery dust, and it
seemed as if, but for the crust, high
wind would have removed the top
soil and left only the red clay subsOil,
which was to be found at varying depths,
but never more than six inches, below
the surface.
Here seemed to me a case for deep
ploughing. Ireasoned that the surface
being so poor the subsoil could do no
harm on top, and putting the Watt
plough at work, [ broke the piece,
turning up about two inches of subsOil
to the surface and afterward, with a
ongffteen inch bulltongue, we brought
up more of the red clay, and mixed the
whole thoroughly with the surface soil.
Early in March | hauled out and put
into the drills fify-two OK loads of
poor "lOt manure" to the acre, beneath !
which was put one hundred pounds of
the ''Stonewall" Gan English manure). |
This was bedded and planted upon,
but not sufficiently deep, as the first
rain left the strawy manure exposed in
many places and ruined the STAND.
The crop came up very quickly; the
seed had been rolled in land plaster,
and the first rain mOistened it, and
plaster retaining the moisture, the cot
ton soon showed above the soil in long,
straight rows of broadish two-leaved |
plants. The stand on most of the land |
was fair, and fine weather, and the
stimulus of the manure, caused a con-
growth in a few days. The
crop was worked with half sweep, bar
side to the row at the first working, the |
middle being cleaned with full sweep.
After the first working, the full twenty
inch sweep was used and the cotton
plowed four. times in quick succession;
it was hoed to a stand before the first
ploughing, and once.afterwards to clean
out grass between the rows. The re-
suit on nineteen of the acres was four
teen bales of about three hundred and
seventy-fve pounds each.
DON'T sUBsOIL PIPE-CLAY LAND.
The other three acres proved total
failure, for the reason that this field had
a pipe-clay subsoil, and when the cot
ton roots penetrated into the clay,
where ] had so ingeniously dug bitches
(which held water instead of draining
the land) with my subsoil plough, the
cotton on the three acres died-with
''blight," my neighbors said; blight
being name given to anything which
kills cotton, by first causing the leaves
to turn a rusty red, and then die and
fall off; the entire plant dying also
about the same time, leaving a few
halfgrown, partly open bolls, within
which can be seen some sickly white
locks of cotton of almost no value.
RULES DEDUCED FROM EXPERIENCE.
From the experience of that year
leduced few general rules which are,
[ think, applicable to any land of
similar character in the South Carolina
lplands, where pine is the principal
timber:
1. To make manure, keep your
Yards well filed with "pine straw"
pine needles, used for bedding cattle,
lorses, etc. ;)also bed your horses and
mules heavily, and have a cellar, or
ome shelter, under which manure can
No LeDt drv and Drotectad from the !