The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1889-05-07

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commence to cut this by the 18th OF
the following April and get six or
eight cuttings between that and hard
weather. 1t will not, however. come
to perfection the first season. 1t is
beyond question the most valuable of
all of all forage plants.
1t should have a very heavy top dress
ing of compost, made of stable manure
and rich earth, wood ashes or bone
fertilizer narrowed in every spring. Be
careful not to use animal manure and
ashes i'll connection, as one destroys
the usefulness of the other. You cam
not make you land too rich for lucerne.
With the best cultivation and manur-
ing, from six to nine tons of choice
hay has been known to be made in
one season from this plant per acre.
Its greatest enemy is chick and win
ter weed, in the winter and spring,
and crab grass in summer. With me,
where it is treated as it should be,
blue grass after a few years takes pos
session. This may, however, be rene
died by seeding in drills II or Is
inches apart, and marking with a
Coulter and hoe, as you would other
crops, working three or four times
during the season-but perhaps the
broadcast is the most profitable cul.
ture here, where labor is scarce. The
essential points in preparing the
ground are: First, to have it fire.
quently and deep plowed and heavily
MANFRED and well clearad of the seeds
of weeds. For this reason l always
SOW in the fall, say from the middle
of August to the middle of Septem-
Der. The first killing frost kills all
weeds. I have had spring seeding,
hand-picked of weeds, to save ia
laborious and expensive job. A dry
loan, sandy loan and rich sand seem
best adapted to it's growth, where it is
claimed its tap-root will penetrate
fifteen or twenty feet. But 1 must
see this. 1t does fairly we'll on red
clay, its tap-root penetrating from ff-
teen to twenty inches, thus enabling
it to withstand drought better than
other plants. 1t will run for ten years
treated as above described.
LITTER FOR MANURE.
Haul up all of your corn-stalks,
bars and weeds cut in clearing up;
put them in your barn lot with chip
manure, &C., they keep you Out of
the mud in winter, catching the drop
pings from passing animals; wagons
and animals running over them will
cut them to pieces, when in summer
you may dig them up and litter with
them, by bedding on top with wheat
straw, leaves, pine straw, &c.
Keep your racks filed with lucerne,
and you cannot realize the amount of
manure one animal will make man
aged in this way; o have you any
idea of the enormous quantity of litter
and bedding you must provide before
crop season commences. For then
you scarcely have time to apply, let
alone provide litter.
A horse or mule will keep in fair
condition and make a crop without
grain if his reach is filled with lucerne.
My stock of litter on hand, first of
April, is all of the corn-stalks of '88,
all briars cut through the winter in
cleaning up, all chip manure of the
past year, three large stacks of wheat
straw and $4,000 to 20, 900 pounds of
broom sedge and crow foot hay. Any
thing will do that is an absorbent.
MANAGEMENT OF MANURE.
Some manures, it would seem, op-
crate by attracting matter which is
food for plants, such as gympsum,
which is supposed to attract nitre and
moisture.
Ashes afford salts and attract nitre.
Other manures again afford, in part,
the food of plants and at the same
time assist them in obtaining more
from the earth by opening it for the
more easy extension of their roots,
such as barn dung and manures of
that kind; others, perhaps, assist
directly in supplying food, such as
salts, blood, putrid flesh, &c. Others,
again, only serve to open earths which
oAO wv 0O4AN W dOL41G GAO 1OOGS LII
search of food, such as sand, rotten
wood, sawdust, tanbark, &C., applied
to clay; and clay applied to sands
assists, in part, by supplying addi-
tional food, and partly by enabling
the soil to retain a suficiency of water
to supply plants with the requisite
proportion of this article. Some
plants extract their food principally
from the air; some mostly from air
and water, and others principally from
the earth. The hyacinth and many
other plants will grow well with air
and water, without the assistance of
earth. But generally speaking, plants
require the united assistance of air,
water and earth, and from these they
extract that food which is requisite to
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