Norwich bulletin., 1909-05-15

L wouldn't be working now. nave
got rich by this time and be riding
past your farms in my automobile,
watching you work and spelling your
roads for you. ! guess" that the dlf-
ference in the seasons may have had
something to do with It; i guess
that there might not have been as
much rain after / put on my ashes as
after my neighbor put on his; l guess
sundry and various things-but l don't
really KNOW one thing about ii. All
it taught me is that what's sauce Tor
the goose is not always sauce for the
gander. despite the ancient proverb.
One mans farm may be stubborn
clay loan. He experiments with II
and at last discovers that fall plow-
ing, with heavy dose of coarse ma
nure turned under, a generous top
dressing OF fertilizer in the spring
compounded on, say, a 2-7-6 basis, and
at least six or seven civilizations Of the
crop while groWing-he discovers that
this method gives him good corn. SO
he breaches that practice to others. l
have even known an agricultural ex-
pertinent station to lay down that
course Of procedure as the one for
farmers to follow generally. Yet on
my cornheld Of gravelly loan, manure
plowed under in the fall is wasted. It
teaches" down to the watertable and
runs off in subterranean currents.
Moreover. the soil calls for different
~ built up fertillzer-lnore nitrogen
and phosphoric acid. And still again
L find that more than three cultiva-
tons do harm and not good. The soil
IS light enough without them and
keeps light. while the horse hoes de-
stroy more corn roots than they do
weed growths.
The clay loan practice won't work
on gravel; on the other hand my ex-
perience with gravel doesn't fit me for
teaching the clay man how to act. Re-
suits achieved on one field by one
course Of treatment won't necessarily
follow the same treatne nt on another
field. ten rods away. Nay, they may
not follow on the same field, another
season. When you come to consider.
all the factors in the problem-differ-
ences of soil. differences in crop Fe-
quirements, differences in fertilizers,
differences in seasons, the whole thing
becomes desperately complicated. A
friend writes me of q lush growth Of
clover appearing on a dump Of coal
aches. I don't doubt It in the least.
Mighty queer things happen before the
eyes of us dirt -diggers-if Wen only
keep those eyes open. My old father
used to save all the ashes from his
DdSe- Dur4eT duLIlTdCILb- uSlHE stove To
put around his fruit trees The fire in
that stove never went out between
November and May, so no helpful
sprinkling Of wood ashes was mixed
in. Yet he declared-and results
seemed to sustain him-that coal ashes
did his plum and pear and apple trees
more good than anything else he could
apply The chemists can't find any
thing in anthracite ashes to explain
fhFG would f1a. OH ef
or no chemists, to urge their general
use as fertilizer. One year I dumped
some on q low bit of garden, where the
soil was sticky and apt to pack into
clods, hoping at least to tighten it up
a little. For three years afterwards
couldn't grow healthy moss on that
spot. not even when I supplied it with
stable manure and fertilizers. You see,
things don't always work the same
way.
Moreover, there's tremendous diff
ference between "test-plats" of a few
square feet or rods, handled under spe-
cbal conditions, and field work or an
acre or acres, managed in a large way.
find that the methods I used to fol-
low when growing larger farm crops
won't work in my truck garden. On
the other hand II I should apply my
garden procedure to a fifty acre corn
or potato field, the labor bill, at present
wage rates. would be bigger than any
possible crop would pay. The longer
I work at crop raising, the more chary
] become Of giving recipes and formu-
lac to my neighbors. And the more
wary am about using their methods
have grown potatoes on a selected bit
of garden containing about one-fiftieth
Of an acre "at the rate Of over 500
bushels to the acre. But I never vet
was able to get quite 500 bushels to
the acre, marketable tubers, from field
work. though I followed sedulously in
the field the lines suggested by garden
tests. The best crop of potatoes I
ever raised came from seed plowed I'M
der, when I plowed the old corn stub
Bile, with just a handful of fertilizer
dropped on the '1and-slde" opposite
each seed before turning 1t under. And
the poorest crop I ever raised was the
very next year afterwards, on a nat
urally better field, following exactly
the same course.
Now just suppose, after that first
years triumph, / had written a book
on The Only Right Way to Raise Po-
tatoes;" the next year I should have
had to write another, taking it all
back, Ell? And neither book would have
been worth its value for old paper to
any other farmer on earth, would it?
THE FARMER.