Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1885-05-01
FARMERS Column.
Give fools their gold 4 knaves their power
Let fortunes bubbles rise and fail;
Who sOws a field or trains a flower.
Or plants a tree. is more than all.
Grass and Fertility.


Grass and Fertility.
1t is an undisputed maxim with the
English farmers that grass is the great
conservstor Of fertility. Grain crops
are exhaustive, and in most cases it is
stipulated that onl y certain small
proportion of land shall be kept I'M
der cultivation. We b,rrow many of
our ideas about farming from Eng
land, this among others, though it is
true that our hot summers and cold
winters offer conditions widely differ
ent from the continued moisture of the
English climate.
Still another element, however, now
enters into the problem. With corn,
either grown a. fodder or for the grain,
we can largely increase the number
and value of farm stock above what
would be possible with grass. either
for pasture or hay. One of the rea
sons why more grass in England inn
piled increased fertility was because it
enabled the farmer to keep and feed
more animals. The old adage runs
thus: "The more grass the more
stock. the more stock the more manure
and the better the condition of the
farm" If one leg of this proposition
gives way the whole totters Even in
England it is. not grass but turnips
that of late years have most increased
stock feeding. Turnips. as W knnw,
are wy exhaustive crop, but they
are fed on the land, and usually with
some purchased grain, oil or cotton
seed meal. With all these adiuncts
clover is now reckoned among the re-
-novatlng crops.
Cannot We in this country include
corn among the crops whose cultiva
ton tends to improve the soil? This,
OF course. is where it is fed on the
farm, and the manure made from it is
returned to the soil. So large pro-
portion Of the corn plant is carbon
that it undoubtedly takes a great deal
from the atmosphere in the shape of
carbonic acid gas, absorbed through
its large leaves. This carbon is rich
in possible nitrogen, and when the
corn plant is fed entire to stock it
makes valuable nitrogeAous manure.
A farmer who grows twelve to fifteen
tons Of fodder on an acre, can, with
tolerable certainty, expect to have
twelve to fifteen loads of good manure
from stock fed on the same and moder-
ately well bedded. Such an annual
supply certainly looks more like main
tanning fertility than the possible a
mounts of manure to be made from
average crops of grass.
The advantage of grass, and espec-
tally of clover. is in root growth and
the power which sod land has in pre-
venting waste of fertility during the
time crops are not growing. White
corn or any grain is pushing its roots
through the soil in every direction,
comparatively little and in most cases
no fertility, will be wasted. But
corn stubble is usually left naked dur
ing the winter. 1t is here that the
loss comes in. Plant food is developed
in the corn field, and potato fields as
well. by cultivation. This develop
ment continues during warm weather
in fall after frosts have destroyed the
growth OF these tender crops. This
available plant food, being soluble. is
carried away by winter rains and melt
ing SHOWS. 1t is washed out Of the
soil, and gives the remarkably fertiliz
ing effects produced by the overflow
IF h0t
this loss.
Any plant growth, however, of suf-
ficient hardness not to be checked by
slight frosts will do the same. The
experiment has sometimes been made
of blowing under winter wheat or rye
early in the spring, and then sowing
oats or barely. A large crop is nearly
always the result, even when the win
ter grain had been partly killei out by
poverty of soil. What fertility there
is the wheat plants conserve, and leave
it in good condition to use for the
coming crop. If rye were sown after
all hoed crops, and to be plowed I'M
der In the spring or otherwise used, it
would save an immense amount of
plant food that is now wasted. 1t
would be far better than grass, simply
because, though it saw plant food
from wasting, it does not allow its de-
velopment as rapidly as it would in
cultivated soil.
Glover is more valuable from it's
large, deep roots penetrating the sub
soil. These roots furnish a great bulk
Of valuable green manure, and both
leaves and stalk are excellent feed,
and make rich manure but the value
of two soiling crops, grown on the
same land in one year, the corn grow
ing in summer and the rye IL fall and
spring, is probably equal, if not great
err, than that of one year-old clover
leaf. We often pillow under clover sod
after it has grown too summers and
winters This time would allow for
four soiling or feeding crops, two each
Of corn and rye, and it is quite posi-
BILE that again fertility would be Gre
ated by four crops than by one, in each
case all being turned into manure.
We do not believe that clover, as fer
tilizer, is to be superseded. It's econ
omy in labor will strongly commend
it to many farmers who may yet ques-
ton its claim to be the most rapid
method of restoring or increasing the
fertility of their soil.