Agriculture for Beginners | Page 8

year, we must cultivate well, drain well, and in the most economical way add humus and plant food.
=EXPERIMENT=
Select a small area of ground at your home and divide it into four sections, as shown in the following sketch:
On Section A apply barnyard manure; on Section B apply commercial fertilizers; on Section C apply nothing, but till well; on Section D apply nothing, and till very poorly.
A, B, and C should all be thoroughly plowed and harrowed. Then add barnyard manure to A, commercial fertilizers to B, and harrow A, B, and C at least four times until the soil is mellow and fine. D will most likely be cloddy, like many fields that we often see. Now plant on each plat some crop like cotton, corn, or wheat. When the plats are ready to harvest, measure the yield of each and determine whether the increased yield of the best plats has paid for the outlay for tillage and manure. The pupil will be much interested in the results obtained from the first crop.
[Illustration: FIG. 13]
Now follow a system of crop-rotation on the plats. Clover can follow corn or cotton or wheat; and cowpeas, wheat. Then determine the yield of each plat for the second crop. By following these plats for several years, and increasing the number, the pupils will learn many things of greatest value.

SECTION VII. MANURING THE SOIL
In the early days of our history, when the soil was new and rich, we were not compelled to use large amounts of manures and fertilizers. Yet our histories speak of an Indian named Squanto who came into one of the New England colonies and showed the first settlers how, by putting a fish in each hill of corn, they could obtain larger yields.
If people in those days, with new and fertile soils, could use manures profitably, how much more ought we to use them in our time, when soils have lost their virgin fertility, and when the plant food in the soil has been exhausted by years and years of cropping!
To sell year after year all the produce grown on land is a sure way to ruin it. If, for example, the richest land is planted every year in corn, and no stable or farmyard manure or other fertilizer returned to the soil, the land so treated will of course soon become too poor to grow any crop. If, on the other hand, clover or alfalfa or corn or cotton-seed meal is fed to stock, and the manure from the stock returned to the soil, the land will be kept rich. Hence those farmers who do not sell such raw products as cotton, corn, wheat, oats, and clover, but who market articles made from these raw products, find it easier to keep their land fertile. For illustration: if instead of selling hay, farmers feed it to sheep and sell meat and wool; if instead of selling cotton seed, they feed its meal to cows, and sell milk and butter; if instead of selling stover, they feed it to beef cattle, they get a good price for products and in addition have all the manure needed to keep their land productive and increase its value each year.
[Illustration:FIG. 14. RELATION OF HUMUS TO GROWTH OF CORN 1, clay subsoil; 2, same, with fertilizer; 3, same, with humus]
If we wish to keep up the fertility of our lands we should not allow anything to be lost from our farms. All the manures, straw, roots, stubble, healthy vines--in fact everything decomposable--should be plowed under or used as a top-dressing. Especial care should be taken in storing manure. It should be watchfully protected from sun and rain. If a farmer has no shed under which to keep his manure, he should scatter it on his fields as fast as it is made.
[Illustration: FIG. 15. THE COTTON PLANT WITH AND WITHOUT FOOD In left top pot, no plant food; in left bottom pot, plant food scanty; in both right pots, all elements of plant food present]
He should understand also that liquid manure is of more value than solid, because that important plant food, nitrogen, is found almost wholly in the liquid portion. Some of the phosphoric acid and considerable amounts of the potash are also found in the liquid manure. Hence economy requires that none of this escape either by leakage or by fermentation. Sometimes one can detect the smell of ammonia in the stable. This ammonia is formed by the decomposition of the liquid manure, and its loss should be checked by sprinkling some floats, acid phosphate, or muck over the stable floor.
Many farmers find it desirable to buy fertilizers to use with the manure made on the farm. In this case it is helpful to understand the composition, source, and availability of the various substances