The Arizona sentinel., 1886-01-02
NEWLY SEEDED LAND.
Should It Be NIanured or Not ?-An old
 Question Revived.

Should It Be NIanured or Not ?-An old
 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. sons 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. 1 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 the money was thrown away. 1 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 farmer can raise is manure, for homemade manure is the key note to successful farming; but when we have the manure made, we must use practical sense in its distribu- tion. One man says it is common sense to bury manure eight inches under ground with three horse blow, 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. Maturing meadows the last five years or more, especially old turf-bound meadows, has been risky business. It is not so with newly seeded fields that have become hard or turf-bound. If we would manure thoroughly after the first crop of grass is taken off, I 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 manured heavily after the first crop of grass was taken of. The application of manure at that time serves two purposes-the solution finds the grass roots more read- fly 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, My own experience is, that the same amount of manure does more good when part is applied before seed- ing down, and part after the first crop of grass.
 A few years since 1 plowed up a run out meadow, manured heavily and planted with corn. I hired 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 loam, and the corn grew very large and badly suckered. The next year it was planted with po- tatoes. Where the two loads of manure were put, the potatoes where treble yield, and most of them were rotten. (Very few rotten ones 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 fair height, but thin- ner, yielding, however, double the grass that the doubled manured portion did. I am satisfied that had the extra load of manure 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 manured heavily before seeding, and then are left to themselves until run out, and have to be re-plowed and re-stocked. Now which is bestp The farmer needs judg- ment as we'll as experiment.-Cor County Gentlemen.