Ellsworth American. [volume] (Ellsworth, Me.) 1855-current, 1875-10-28
Pine Leaves sorl Ahscrhents.


As our old New England soil becomes
exhausted after being stripped of the FIRST
| growth, which was mostly hard wood in
terspersed more thinly with pine. the sue
! ceeding growth If left to nature. is more
exclusively pine of rspid growth, which
sheds abundsntly every year a large
| amount of leaves to every acre of wood
| land. And while the rundown tllage land
demands large increase of manure from
the barnyards, every available thing in the
shape OF vegetable absorbents is greatly
needed TO supply the demand. The more
vegetable substance contained therein for
upland soil, the better will be the manure.
In absence OF swamp mud of the right
kind, which Is not always plenty on most
farms, pine leaves seem 10 suggest them
selves to oil up the gap. The only ques-
ton seems TO be Cat least in my mind,) are
they good for that purp ose? Do they con-
tain nothing injurious TO our crops, 4 thus
applied from the compost heap? Being no
chemist, have no means Of Information
on that point, only what as yet is but very
meagrely derived from others.
first used them nearly forty Years ago,
when boy, in ls4o, drawing them out to
a field with horse, to be ploughed under
with what effect could never tell, as the
held which was in the pasture, was the
next year turned out 10 pasture by my IA
thes. have latterly advocated their use
,ghan sDaak inc in lab arA hur
used them to some extent In hogs yard and
stable. AS there seemed TO be q sourness
10 them, which thought could be the on
ly objection, l made a small compost heap
with layer of pine leaves, covered thinly
with quick lime to dscomposc and destroy
the sourness, and a layer OF turf, then lay
er of leaves and lime. and so on. IL remain
ed through the following summer, the
weeds seemed 10 grow with considerable
rankness around it, ana ii was removed 10
the stable with other materials, but what
its relative value was OF course | could not
tell.
one of the members of the New lamp
| shire Board of Agriculture, J. +. Law
renee, Of Rockingham County. in his essay
on Manures, published in the report OF
1873, speaks In favor OF pine leaves as an
absorbent. On page go he says: Pine
leaves, contrary TO general belief, are more
valuable than most hard wood varieties.
being specially rich in nitrogen and phos-
phorlc acids, and two men can secure a
large amount in day or two In autumn
On the large farms in Saxony, where farm
ing is probably conducted more scientifi-
caliy than in any other country in the
world, they have a man termed manure
bailif, whose duty ii is to get together
everything that will add to the value and
amount of the manure pile, and there a
very high estimate is placed on the leaves
OF The pine" Hon. Warren Brown. In same
report, in Remarks on Fertilization"
page 225, says: al would not advise the
use of pine leaves as has been recommend
ed, not but that they would make good ma
nure, but we cannot afford 10 rob the wood
lands OF the annual deposit made By nature
TO restore the fertility"
wish that some of these questsons, so
deeply important to agriculturalists, could
be settled definitely by chemical science.
should like TO hear something on this pine
leaf question from some OF the scientific
correspondents OF the Farrser. M J.
Harvey, Epping, in n. E. Farmer