The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1891-07-09
FARMER AND PLANTER.
CULTURE OF GRASS.

a Tennesseean Gives His Experience for
the Benefit of Others.
l have read the article of FL. W.! B. in
the March number of the Cultivator. l
do not know how my kind of grass will
do on his South Carolina soil. 1 do
know how and what it will do on Ten
nessee soil. With your indulgence
will give your readers piece of my
practical experience.
l bought one hundred acres of worm
out land-a clay subsoil. Not an acre of
it would produce as much as fifteen
bushels of corn. turned it in in Au-
gust and September, sowed it in wheat.
In April following | sowed on it twelve
bushels common red clover. Two weeks
later l sowed over it gypsum at the rate
of forty pounds to the acre. 1t was an
average wheat year. l harvested from
the one hundred acres few bushels
over four hundred.
took out all cross fences, and had
some tenants to plant their gardens in
the general inclosure. I had deter
mined that there should be absolutely
no grazing on this land. The follow
ing year sold eighty tons of clover
hay, reserving enough to feed my own
stock. / also gathered and sold eighty
five bushels clover seed. To shorten
the story, harvested from this land
two crops each year for four years. 1
put on it each year forty pounds gyp-
sum per acre, but not pound of any
other fertilizer-not a single load of
stable manure.
then plowed eighteen acres of the
average land and cultivated in corn. l
sold the corn by measure. The eight
cen acres made eight hundred and
forty-two bushels shelled corn. l then
put the entire one hundred acres in
wheat, and harvested sixteen hundred
and twenty bushels. l had four good
crops of hay off all of it, five off of all
except the eighteen acres, and two crops
clover seed. The seed crops had failed
two years That one hundred acres will
make now over twenty-five bushels
wheat per acre; at least, a large part of
it will. My experience with it ceased
fifteen years since.
The point is, made hay; but made
good land out of very poor land at the
same time, and without expense. What
was it that so improved the land? Not
clover turned under, for l turned none.
Not clover left on the land, for took
off all that the moving machine and
horse rake could get. What did it?
There was no miracle about it. There
was in it som ething that had the prac-
teal effect of improving the soil in pro-
ductiveness, and at the same time har-
vesting paying crops.
l assert that on soils underlaid with
| clay, the same course will produce like
results every time, in climate adapted
to clover. / found that after moving,
my ground was quickly covered with a
nice green aftermath. found that the
surface of the soil was always loose
and pulverized, so that the wasted
clover seed found fine seed-bed wher-
ever there was a vacant spot. In this
way the ''stand'' was always good.
Now if l am right in my facts, as
above stated, then l have found a way
to recuperate worn-out soils, that any
farmer may make available, no matter
how slim his purse. If the facts are
true, it does not make any difference
what the theory may be. The results
may be reached without any theory.
But | have a way of accounting for
the results that seems to me to be good
theory. A thousand years ago and
more, the land was covered with vege-
table growth. Animals roamed the
woods or prairies. Insects and rep
tiles lived. All of these have passed
away-have been dissolved into plant
food, and other generations of plants
and animals before and after them.
The water of the rains and SHOWS sink
ing down into the subsoll has every
year taken down with it some part of
the plant food furnished by the com
plete decomposition of what was alive
on the surface in other years. If there
had not been in natures operation some
counter process by which this plant
food was brought back to the surface
soil, it had all been taken too deep
down to be reached by plant roots long
years ago. But nature has such a pro-
cess. There is a constant bringing to-
ward the surface of plant food from
the great storehouse below. In the
plowed field much of what is brought
up goes off in the sultry sunshine.
Under an clubhouse or pile of brush,
it stops in the surface soil, and the spot
is rich. Loose surface soil; shade; these
two combined and the land grows rich
out of the storehouse of the deep sub
soil. A leguminous crop, like clover or
peas, furnishes these conditions.
Let any farmer set aside plat of
land, with only fertility enough to
make clover catch. Let him take all.
hay it will produce every year; but
keep the stock off, and in five years
that plat will be RICH. c. H, in
Southern Cultivator.