News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-05-25
THE FERTILIZING OF CORN.

If we look at the process by which
the largest fields of corn are produced,
we find difference in some respects as
regards the methods practiced, yet in
all of them there is one element present
which is depended upon as a most i'm
portant agent in producing the desired
result, and that is the addition of some
concentrated fertilizer, either home
made or manufactured by the chemist
and sold in the market. The first
method that occurs to one when this
subject is considered, and the most fire.
quent in practice, is the plowing in of a
clover or mixed clover and grass sod.
This is the usual fertilizer for the corn
crop, and is SO common in practice that
farmer who proposes to plant corn
upon fallow or stuble, and much
more so when the ground is corn
stubble-excepting In the West, where
the natHraI fertility Of the soil enables
the farmer to do as he pleases with it
is often considered as recklessIy flying
in the face of all probabilities of success
and of wasting land and timeand seed.
1t must be confessed that the success of
the practice warrants the general faith
in it, for, as rule, in localities where
farming is pursued with the greatest
skill, as, for instance, in Eastern Penn
sylvan1a, Southern New Jersey. Western
New York, and the "Western Reserve, :"
so called, eighty or ninety bushels of
grain per acre is by no means an un-
usual crop, and 100 or over is some
times reached. The sod is encouraged
to make as large growth as possible
by topdressing in the fall with fine
manure, so that when it is turned under
it would yield an excellent crop of hay.
To realize, then, what plant food, both
in amount and in quality, is thus turned
under for the corn crop, it is only nee
essary to consider of what this large
quantity of green fertilizing matter con-
sists.
A sod such as the writer once saw
turned under by a notable farmer in
Southeastern Pennsylvania a few years
ago was eight inches thick, a mass of
roots and vegetable matter mingled with
a soil naturally rich by previous good
culture and abundant manuring, and,
at moderate estimate, would weigh OF
least eight tons per square rcd. That is
estimating 250 square feet of surface
eight inches thick as ITO cubic feet, and
weighing 100 pounds to the cubic foot.
This, of course, includes the vegetable
matter remaining and the soil intimately
mixed with it and partly derived from
the decay of portion of the vegetable
matter of the sod in the previous year
or years. This would amount to the
enormous quantity of 1890 tons of the
richest of plant food, and quite equal
in value to any compost that the farmer
could make with infinite pains and
labor. Comment upon such a fact as
this is quite unnecessary for tue intel
ligent reader and farmer, and shows in
a very striking manner of what surpass-
ing value for the corn crop is a sod of
this kind, and indeed, of what very
great and rarely appreciated value
moderate sod is, even one consisting of
two inches only in thickness of matted
roots and decayed debris of roots, stems,
and leaves of the previous growth of
clover and grass. And a heavy grass
sod is easily seen to be considerably
more valuable than the much vaunted
clover sod, for the matted roots of the
former completely fill the soil, while
those Ct the latter, although long and
thick, do not more fully occupy the
ground. A mixed clover and grass sod,
however, plowed under, in its prime,
with a more or less luxuriant herbage on
the surface, furnishes perhaps the rich
est fertilizing which farmer can pro.
vide for his corn crop. But with this
even the best farmers are not content
putting O liberal top dressing of
upon 1t, or in the absence of
this, at least liberal application OF
chemical fertilizers.