The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1879-02-19
Riches in Swamp Muck.

A writer in the Rur0L Neao Yorker
has firm faith in swamp muck. The
results that have followed the use of
it in this State enables US to confirm
what he says.
Sometimes a farm keeps poor and
gets run down, out of sloth and lack
of means to better its belongings.
But its poverty is about as often due
to ignorance OF its resources and the
methods of it's betterment. That
muck swamp whose sleeping forces
and stored up enrichment its histori-
an puts into such clear figures, is the
right place to begin its new life.
There, are stored generations Of de-
cay to feed the, rootlets Of grass or
grain counting its pourishment. The
Doggy hole Of swamp is but a
younger branch of that deep and an
Gent store house of enrichment, the
peat bed. The latter is of the same
breed, but of older and larger growth.
A swamp is thus a lowland water log,
whose shallow depth of vegetable
mold cannot be spared, and will not
pay for moving 20 crops in other
fields, though plenty for those plant
eli above its drained surface. The
peat bed is Gods century-garnered
store of that same mold, able to nour-
ish not only its own, but to spare for
generations, to crops on other farm
lands around its sunken area.
A farmer friend of mine who beats
all I know, in field or garden, an
swers to my notes of praise and Won
der, "It's only question of manure"
1t is question, luck or failure, whose
solution brings rich fields and album
dant crops, or starving farm. His
lands are under the highest culture;
they are kept so by full supply OF
manure, made possible by solid cash,
first laid out in stock and sea drift
Uttered yards and stalls Yet the So
luton is as open to poor farm own
er's wits, as to the money of my
friend. The rich owners soil tells
the footing OF his funds in bank. The
poor farms swamp or peat bed, is an
undug gold placer, whose water log
must be drained and torn up before
the glittering ore is reached. The ia.
bic of the field, made fertile by the
son who trenched it deep in search for
gold which his parent dimly told him
would thus be found, might be para
phrased to the enrichment OF a good
many other sons, who have no better
inheritance than rundown, muck.
swamp farm Such may find both
wealth and solution 3of theimanure
question at the bottom of a deep
swamp drain.
1t there Is any truth i'll chemistry,
if the soils elements and their record,
if all we know about how plants feed
and about the makeup of that black
decay dug out Of swamp holes, are
not all myths, the owner of every
swamp farm has plenty of manure at
hand. In every acre OF swamp,
whose drained and settled muck
shows only foot in depth of black
vegetable mold, there are more than
1,6OOcubic yards of manurialmaterial,
equal, load for load to that from the
stalls. To be sure, you need to tame
its acids and help out its dearth of
salts by a sprinkling OF lime and
ashes. But the cost Of these goes in
to crops on this as on other soils.
They do more than this to your
drained muck. They make all those
1000 cubic yards, rich, lasting and
improving manure heap. Better than
that it is manure carted, spread,
and commingIed with the soil. You
have not that toilsome job to do. You