Year: 1879

AN OLD FARMER's CULTURE OF CORN.


Editor Southern CaAtuator.-As YOU
request your patrons to give you the results
of experiments they make, beg leave to
give you mine. For the past three years
L have entirely changed my manner of ap-
plying manure to corn, and have also
changed the implements with which I cul-
tivate my corn crop. So far as the prep.
aration and culture is concerned, I have
abandoned the shovel, twister and bull,
tongue, and substituted therefor a light
two-horse Avery plough. In stiff lands
| use two mules, in light land one, and
break the land from three to five inches
deep. never break my land but once and
when broken use the rotary and smooth
ing harrow until the clods arc pulverised,
and the tussocks of grass and weeds are all
torn to pieces. The importance of thor
oughly pulverizing is not appreciated by our
farmers, although Jethro Tull demonstrated
its wisdom upwards of hundred wears
ago. then lay off my land with small
straight shovel-shallow. The corn is
dropped in this furrow, width governed by
the strength of the land. 1t is then covered
with the rotary harrow. IF going over the
land once with the harrow does not fill the
furrow made by the straight shovel har-
row until the land is made level When
the corn is dropped, there is applied about
80 lbs (to the acre) of a commercial fertili-
zer, mixed with three times its bulk of
vegetable matter gathered in the field
When the corn has ) or 4 blades I 60
through it with the horse hoe or maltese
cultivator, two burrows to the row, which
cleans it thoroughly, and do not 60 mere
than two inches deep. I endeavor to run
through the corn after every rain, using
the same implement. When the corn is
knee or waist high, as convenience suits,
l apply the bulk Of my manure, which is a.
handful Of acid phosphate, .composted with
stable manure. This is the quantity di-,
rect TO be applied, but my laborers find it,
more convenient to put half handful, as
they can then keep up with the plough
more easily. l care little whether the ma,
nure is covered or uot, but do like to get
o rain soon after. then plough with a
sweep and continue with tho sweep until
the crop is laid by.


l did not plant my corn LAST year until;
l was done planting cotton, and the season.
was much more favorable to early than late
planting, yet all my neighbors' corn was
fred by drought, while mine remained
green. am now in my eightieth year,
have been planting forty.two years, yet I
never saw field of better upland corn
and all who saw it would say it was the best
fold Of corn in the county


When the manure is put on TOP of the
ground, the first rain that falls carries all
the fertilizing matter into the ground,
where the roots are near the surface The
roots run mostly two, three or four inches,
except in dry time, and if manure is put
five inches below the surface, the roots sell
dom find it.


From what see in your and other pa
pers, think labor here is about the same
as with you; but agriculturure in the
South can never rise, so long rs the great
Juggernaut Of protection runs over it's
harbors and crushes them, for the benefit
of Northern looms, furnaces, &c.


| CHESTER.
/ Chester, s. c., March, 6, 1879.