The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1880-10-28
FARM, GARDEN AND HOUSEHOLD.
How Many ERgsi

fowls yearly. Well, how much butter
will Jersey COW make yearlyP These
questions depend on the keeping and
health of the fowls or cows in great de-
gree. Hens have been known to produce
over $50 eggs yearly, but 900 is an extra
yield. We have often heard of cows
that would give twenty quarts of milk
daily, and Of others from whose product
two pounds of butter could be made
daily; but in our purchases we have not
rs yet been the fortunate owner of either
of this class. To return to fowls, we
will add that flock of ten hens that will
flock; while to still further brush away
these fowery anticipations, we will
bring fair average yield to ten dozen
per year per hen. These, at thirty cents
per dozen, amount to three dollars; from
this deduct half for feed, and the net
profit is no mean one. Over-production
in eggs makes uncertainty in Matching
chickens, so be moderate in giving stim.
ulants. ts.-Poultry Yard.
Mystery of Fertilization.
For the last forty years there has been
no article known to agriculturists which
has so largely claimed the attention of
the man of science, or indirectly that of
the farmer, as has nitrogen. Theory
and practice alike have confirmed the
opinion that there is no more important
element, either in the vegetable or ami
nal kingdom, than this; and yet how,
or in what manner, or in what kind of
combinations it enters into the vegeta-
bic kingdom we know no more than we
did when the inquiry first began. We
can discourse eloquently upon '.e fertil-
izing qualities of Peruvian guano; we
can tell how its fertilizing qualities de-
pend upon the amount OF nitrogen it
con aims; but in what condition that
nitrogen enters into the parts we are
yet in the dark. We know that clover
is wonderful fertilizer, that it leaves
large amount of nitrogen in the soil, in
its roots and scattered leaves; but
whether it did not accumulate the
whole from the soil, and present it to us
in new compounds, or through its
leaves, presenting substances to the
nitrogen in the atmosphere which
would combine with it, so that it could
be carried to the soil and be made of
advantage to other vegetation, we are
to-day as ignorant as we were hundred
years ago. But this we do know, that
one kind of vegetation does furnish and
prepare food for another kind, and in
this way we find the practical value of
alternating crops.
Mr.. Lawes, in 1873, experimental
with barely and clover. He sowed half
Il field with barley without manure,
which had been kept in that crop the
three previous years and fertilized with
artificial manures; the other half had
been sown to clover the year previous.
The yield of barley was thirty-one
bushels to the acre; and clover, three
tons forty-eight pounds per acre. The
next year the whole field was sown to
barley without manure. The half
previously in barley gave 323 bushels;
the other half after clover gave fifty
eight bushels per acre. Thus we see
that, after taking off a very valuable
crop OF clover, he had increased the fer
tility of the soil to almost double that
OF the half which had been in barley.
Now, without entering into any specu-
!atlve theories of where this amount of
fertilizing material came from, we have
the facts, which we cannot ignore, that
by the aid of clover the crop of barley
was vastly increased. Nor can we with
out presumption say that this fertility
was the result of nitrogen, which the
clover collected, any more than it was
the result of phosphoric acid and potash,
which it had also collected; for, unless
there were already accumulated in the
soil these two principles, equivalent to
the acquisitions of that amount of ar
ley, it would have been in vain that the
soil obtained through the clover the
necessary amount OF nitrogen. Mr..
Geddes, of Onondaga, New York. tertil-
ICES to great extent with clover. His
best market crop is wheat. Ills tertil.
lzer tor clover is gypsum, and his clover
furnishes fertility for his wheat.
But MI. Harris contends that by fall
lowing, nitrogen and minerals may be
Liberated in year which would pro
duce crops from which as much profit
could be obtained as from the use of
clover and cropping every wear. This
is nice question to decide. That tal-
lowing piece of land, allowing the
weeds good start, then plowing them
under, and plowing two or three times
during the summer will develop Won
deriul amount of fertility there is no
doubt. Thls was practice of almost
general application before the event OF
special fertilizers, and before anything
was known of the theories of either nj
trogen or minerals as fertilizers. Jethro
Tulis system was that all the fertiliza.
tion necessary in soils. without even the
use OF barnyard manure. was in the
proper manner of working the soil. But
all our experiments are Tor the present
season uncertain and unsatisfactory.
we have sown patches with clover, in
order to test its fertilizing powers, also
with a number of different fertilizers:
but the weather, which is beyond the
control of man, has dried the clover.
Neither have we had rain enough to
render soluble the fertilizers we have
used, but we hope that they remain in
the ground, waiting for that rain which
shall render them available. Wen
to be told that dry seasons had their
advantages as well as disadvantages,
aud one was that a wet season carried
the salts down into the ground and
dry. season brought them back to the
surface; that, as result, we had heavy
crops succeeding season of drought.
10 this there may be two or three
solutions. In the first place, during the
season OF the growth OF plants we sell
dom have rainfall sufficient to carry the
salts below the reach of the plants. so
that the apprehensions we had of fertil-
izing matter being washed away were
needless; and the fact that in very dry
season the crops were so light they did
not use the fertilizers we had applied to
the soil, and the heavy crops which sue,
ceeded dry season were on account Of
Light crops which had preceded it. AL.
though we do not entirely discard the
idea OF salts ascending during dry sea-
son, yet we believe that they are not
exhausted, but that the intense li9ht
and heat, together with the atmosphere
which is let into the ground, will pre-
pare considerable plant food, and, if the
and hoes are used as much