Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-01-01
w SEEDED A N
Should 1t BE MANFRED or Not ?-An Old
Question Revived.

Question Revived.
For the last twenty years there has
been much said and written about
manuring. Fertilizers are now having
a boom on some lands, and in some sea-
son they work wonders the same sea-
son, while in other seasons they do no
good, in some cases being a positive
injury. Their cost usually exceeds their
value. l heard one man report at an
agricultural meeting, that he had used
sixty thousand dollars worth of fertil-
izers in his life, and one-half Of tho
money az thrown away. l am not
blaming the manufacturer, for good,
substantial, honest farmers are making
their own fertilizers, and have published
the wholesale price of the ingredients
used, and it would seem that there is but
a small margin for the manufacturer.
The best crop a farmer "a raise is
manure, for homemade manure is the
key note to successful farmingj but
when we have the manure made, we
must use practical sense in its distribu-
ton. One man says it is common sense
to bury manur eight inches under
ground with a three horse plow,
and another says it is common
sense to put it on the surface
where the grass roots can get hold of it,
and both are looking for the same re-
suit. Manuring meadows the last five
years or more, especially old turf-bound
meadows, has been risky business. 1t
is not 80 with newly seeded fields that
have become hard or t%urf-bound. If we
would manure thoroughly after the first
crop of grass is taken off, l think we
would see better results. My observa-
ton has been, that where hay is a spe-
cialty, and manure plenty, the newly
seeded mowings have been MANFRED
heavily after the first crop of grass was
taken off. The application of manure
at that time serves two purposes-the
solution finds the grass roots more read
lily while the ground is open and porous,
and seemingly does double the good that
it would on turf; and it also operates as
a mulch. Ny own experience is, that
the same amount of manure does more
good when a part is applied before seed
ing down, and a part after the first crop
of grass.
< few years since l plowed up q run-
out meadow, MANFRED heavily and
planted with corn. I hired a new man
to cart manure and told him to begin
to spread where the other man left off;
but instead of that he put one
load on top of where an
other had been spread. The
soil was good yellow loan, and the corn
grew very large and badly suckered.
The next year it was planted with po-
tatoes. Where the two loads of
were put, the potatoes where a treble
Weld, and most of them were rotten.
Very few rotten les anywhere else in
the tield.) The next year it was sowed
to oats and stocked down, the oats lodg-
ing. The grass grew three or four
years very large, but the field soon
turfed over so thick that the grass grew
short, and this year it was not over four
inches high, but thick, while the rest Of
the meadow was a fair height, but thin
ner, yielding, however, double the grass
that the doubled MANFRED portion did.
[ am satisfied that had the extra load Of
been saved and applied when
the seeding was new, the result would
have been more satisfactory. Some hay
farmers manure every other year and
keep up their good crops of grass, while
farms alongside are manfred heavily
before seeding, and then are left to
themselves until run out, and have to
be re-plowed and re-stocked. Now
which is best? The farmer needs judg-
ment as well as experimentation
Country Gentleman.