Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1891-05-28
FARMER AND PLANTER.
CULTURE OF GRASS.
A Tennesseean Gives Ills Experience Z,
the Benefit of Others.

Iennesseean Gives Ills Experience for
the Benefit of Others.
/ have read the article of II. w. b. in
the March number of the Cultivator
do not know how my kind of grass will
do on his South Carolina soil. | do
know how and what it will do on Ten
nessee soil. With your indulgence l
will give your readers piece of my
practical experience.
| bought one hundred acres of worn
out land-a clay subsoil. Not an acre of
1t would produce MS 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 sowed over it gypsum at the rate
of forty pounds to the acre. 1t was an
average wheat year. 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 Enclosure. | 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, l harvested from this land
two crops each year for four years, !
put on it each year forty pounds gyp-
sum per acre, but not pound of any
other fertilizer-not single load of
stable manure.
then plowed eighteen acres of the
average land and cultivated in corn. |
sold the corn by measure. The eight
cen acres made eight hundred and
forty-two bushels shelled corn. / then
put the entire one hundred acres in
wheat and harvested sixteen hundred
and twenty bushels. / 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, large part of
1t will. My experience with it ceased
fifteen years since.
The point is, 1 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 netting that had the prac-
teal effect of improving the soil in pro-
ductiveness, and at the same time har-
vesting paying crops.
] assert that on soils underlaid with
clay, the same course will produce like
results every time, in climate adapted
to clover. found ttat after moving,
my ground was quickly covered with a
nice green aftermath. found that the
surface of the soil WIS always loose
and pulverized, so that the wasted
clover seed found a 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 | have found 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 way of accounting foi
the results that seems to me to be goot
theory. A thousand years ago anC
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 plan
food, and other generations of plant
and animals before and after them
The water of the rains and SHOWS sink
ing down into the subsoll has ever,
wear taken down with it some part o
the plant food furnished by the com
plete decomposition of what was aliv,
on the surface in other years. If Their
had not been in nature S operation SOM
counter process by which this plan
food was brought back to the surfac
soil, it had all been taken too dee
down to be reached by plant roots loni
years ago. But nature has such a pro
cess. There is constant bringing to
ward the surface of plant food from
the great storehouse below. In Oh
plowed field much of what is brough
up goes off in the sultry sunshine
Under an clubhouse or a pile of brush
it stops in the surface soil, and the spo
is rich. Loose surface soil; shade; thes
two combined and the land grows ric
out of the storehouse of the deep sui
soil. A leguminous crop, like clover O
peas, furnishes these conditions.
Let any farmer set aside plat c
land, with only fertility enough t
make clover catch. Let him take a
hay it will produce every year; bu
keep the stock off, and in five year
that plat will be rich.-J. c. H., i
Southern Cultivator.