Crofting

“ They are "strong" and fertile,—and should be able to absorb, and to prepare for the use of plants, the manure which is applied to them, and the fertilizing matters which are brought to them by each storm;—but they cannot properly exercise the functions of fertile soils, for the reason that they are strangled with water, chilled by evaporation, or baked to almost brick-like hardness, during nearly the whole period of the growth and ripening of the crop. ”

“ Plants discovered the grand principle of the rotation of crops long before man did. The farmer now knows that if he sows wheat or turnips too many years running on the same plot, he 'exhausts the soil,' as we say—deprives it of certain special mineral or animal constituents needful for that particular crop, and makes the growth of the plant, therefore, feeble or even impossible. To avoid this misfortune, he lets the land lie fallow, or varies his crops from year to year according to a regular and deliberate cycle. ”

“ And thus passed the seasons of the year until the harvest came. And he went to look at one of his crofts, and behold it was ripe. “I will reap this to-morrow,” said he. And that night he went back to Narberth, and on the morrow in the grey dawn he went to reap the croft, and when he came there he found nothing but the bare straw. Every one of the ears of the wheat was cut from off the stalk, and all the ears carried entirely away, and nothing but the straw left. ”

“ Fertility cannot be stored up in sand as in clay, and it should be our aim to give our strawberries the food they need in a form that permits of its immediate use. Therefore, in preparing such land, I would advise deep plowing while it is moist, if possible, soon after a rain; then the harrowing in of a liberal top-dressing of rotted compost, or of muck sweetened by the action of frost and the fermentation of manure, or, best of all, the product of the cow-stable. Decayed leaves, sods, and wood-ashes also make excellent fertilizers. ”

“ The Summer-fallow.—Bare land loses in total plant-food, but may make a temporary gain in available fertility. The practice of leaving a field uncropped for an entire season has been abandoned in good farming regions. Where moisture is in scant supply, and a soil is thin, there continue instances of the summer-fallow. In a crop-rotation containing corn and wheat, the corn-stubble land is left unbroken until May or June, and then plowed. In August it is plowed again, and fitted for seeding to wheat. ”

“ EARLY DAYS OF SPRING. If the soil be thrown up during the open weather into ridges, an immense number of insects will be unburrowed and destroyed; stiff clayey soils will be rendered more crumbling and mellow by exposure to frost. If advantage is taken of the weather to haul manure, let it be stacked up, and a little earth thrown over it, else the volatile and most valuable portions will escape. Ashes may be spread over the garden; a small portion of refuse salt will benefit the ground, and may be sown now. Clear the ground of all vines, stalks, haulm. ”

“ Bulbs and cuttings are sometimes forced out of the ground, whilst grass and young wheat may be so loosened that they have to be rolled in again as soon as the weather permits. When the ground has been dug in autumn and left in a very rough state all this loosening work of the frost is very much helped, because so much of the soil may become frozen. If in spring you dig a piece of land that has already been dug in autumn, and then try digging a piece that has not, you will find the first much easier work than the second in all but very sandy soils. ”

“ To prepare the land for the crop we start in September. After the fall rains have softened the soil, plow, harrow, roll, harrow again, then replow and work it again, until the soil is as fine as an onion bed. Now we throw it into ridges, six feet apart, and it is ready for work in early spring. For manure we sow 2,000 pounds of superphosphate and ground Sitka herring, equal parts of each, to the acre. With two horses and a Planet, Jr., cultivator we work the ridges until they are nearly level. By using two horses we straddle the ridge, and save tramping it where our plants are to go. ”

“ When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five inches of top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all materials required by grass or grain. Every blade taken from the soil, takes off some portion of that soil with it.
2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater amount of earth, which, when subjected to the frosts, the atmosphere, and the action of the plow, becomes fit for vegetation.
3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils; certainly not to that degree that they do shallow soils. ”

“ All touched by it is ruined, and good for nothing. The crop must be cut and hung, even if not fully ripe, before any frosts occur. If there are strong appearances of a frost, you can secure the crop by cutting it down, and putting it either under your sheds, or by putting it in piles, not over 1 foot deep, in the field, and covering with straw. It is well to let it stand, if not fully ripe, as long as it can safely, for the cool nights have a tendency to thicken up the leaves. ”

“ If it is a fresh, recently cleared piece of fertile soil, under favorable conditions, I am satisfied you don't need very much in the way of inter-cropping. On the other hand, if you select for your orchard site a piece of land that has been worked to death, I believe it would be well to inaugurate a system of inter-cropping that would have for its object the building up of that soil and the improvement of the environment for the roots of those trees. In the South, we are favored with twelve months of growing weather. We plant our crops throughout the year. ”

“ There is an opposite extreme to high cultivation; there are evils besetting low-cultivation. In cold, wet, stiff, barren soils, and in a cool, or humid, or cloudy atmosphere, trees require stimulants. The soil needs drying, warming, manuring; and the tree requires pruning. But such a system is ruinous, where the soil is full of fiery activity, bursting out with an irrepressible fertility and a superabundant vegetation; where the long summer days are intensely brilliant, and the air warm enough to ripen fruit even in the densest shade of an unpruned tree. ”

“ It requires good judgment to tell at the time of thinning what will prove superfluity at the harvest. Vigor of tree, variety, fertility and moisture in the soil, the season, diseases and insects, all must be considered. The common advice is to thin the fruits so that they will not be nearer together than from four to six inches but the skillful growers adjust the size of the crop to the orchard and seasonal conditions. Thinning really begins, it should be said, in the winter when the trees are dormant and redundant branches and superfluous wood on the parts remaining are cut out. ”

“ The best plowing will be too shallow, but these spindling little plows, drawn by a little meagre horse, will skim over your ground, averaging from three to four inches deep, and preparing your soil to receive the utmost possible detriment from summer droughts. What chance have young roots, or the finer fibres of plants, to penetrate more than a few inches of surface-soil? Persons come to our garden and wonder why some vegetables flourish so well, while they never have luck with them, “It must be a difference of soil.” ”

“ Plowing.—Autumn is the time for plowing hard or stiff clay soils, especially if in a part of the country where freezing takes place, as the action of the frost during the winter will break the soil into fine particles and render it suitable for planting. Sandy loams and soils that contain a large amount of humus may be plowed in the spring, but the work should be done early in order that the soil may settle before planting. ”

“ They have to guard against too much moisture, and we against drought; hence, they should plant on ridges, and we on an even surface. To get the largest crop, plow a deep furrow for each row, put in plenty of good manure, cover it with the plow and level the surface, and plant over the manure. When well growing, they should be thinned to six or eight inches in the row. Often stirring the earth while they are young is of great benefit. The quality and quantity of a root-crop depend much upon the rapidity of its growth. Slow growth gives harder roots of worse flavor, as well as a stinted crop. ”

“ But to keep the soil in good condition, and yet comply with the fruit cultivators' chief axiom that, "from the time of blossom till the crop is ripe the roots should not be disturbed," is a matter of great difficulty—I might almost indeed say an impossibility. For, from the trampling of the people in their passage up and down the lines, and the dash of the rain, the soil becomes exceedingly hard immediately after, or at least very shortly after the rain. ”

“ Before the wheat, or any grain soever can appear, this grass has shot up so high and so thick as absolutely to choke it. Suppose it was possible to hoe or weed it, the grass will again overtop the grain before it is an inch from the ground. Say it could be again hoed or cleared, by this time the rains are so continual, the black earth becomes a perfect mire. The rain increases, and the grain rots without producing any crop. ”

“ In localities where compost is scarce, it is well to alternate fertilization by plowing under lupins, beans or other vegetable matter of easy growth. If the dressing of the soil is done biennially, one half of the ground could be plowed under as stated. ”

“ Weeds spring up freely, and at the same time water, air, and frost act on the soil, disintegrating and mellowing it and inducing the formation of certain substances necessary to vegetation. The weeds are converted into mold, and finally the land, rested and recuperated, is ready to bear a new crop. ”

“ Tillers of the soil are beginning their activity with plough, shovel, rake, breaking the firm grip of grim winter upon the Earth, so that the mild spring warmth may penetrate her breast and coax into growth and maturity the seeds lying in her womb. ”

“ The season will open too wet or too dry, the seed may rot in the ground, the young plant may be nipped with frost or grow pale for want of rain, the crop runs the alternate hazards of drought or floods, it is wasted by rust or devoured by worms ”

“ Moisture and darkness are essential to the germination of the seed, and these conditions can be secured only by making the surface compact while damp. The disintegration of the deeper lumps, and the decomposition of fertilizers, will cause the surface to grow gradually softer. The effect of plowing is to break the ground into lumps, which lie upon each other, giving free admission to the air between them. Harrowing makes finer the lumps near the surface, and mixes the fertilizer deeper than a rake can be used. ”

“ Frost soon kills plants that have not had time to take a firm hold of the soil.
Autumn brings much labour in the garden in the shape of tidying, weeding, and preparing for next year. Annuals that have become shabby may be pulled up and thrown away. They will leave a bare place that you must dig over well. [228] Before you replant it you must consider whether what you are going to plant would like a little manure beneath its roots, or as a blanket on the top. A greedy annual has probably impoverished the soil. ”

“ Summer preparation for grass gives opportunity to destroy a great part of the seeds in the surface of the ground, and it is only when they are near the surface that the seeds of most weeds will germinate. Deep harrowings, continued up to time of planting, not only rob land of water, but they bring to the surface new lots of seed that had been safely buried, and become a part of the actual seeding when the grass, clover, or alfalfa is sown. ”

“ A world of pounding and hammering of lumps, to make them fine, in spring, is saved by fall plowing, besides incorporating the manure more thoroughly with the soil, as well as freezing out and destroying the eggs of worms and insects which infest it. Thrown up deeply and roughly with the plow or spade, the frosts act mechanically upon the soil, and slack and pulverise it so thoroughly that a heavy raking in early spring, is 201 all that becomes necessary to put it in the finest condition for seeds, and make it perhaps the very best and most productive of all garden soils whatever. ”

“ In the light of these experiments the generally accepted theories of soil-exhaustion must be reconstructed, and the action and relative value of manures must be investigated from a new stand-point.
The exhaustion of a soil can no longer be estimated by the constituents removed in the crop, Wheat and oats, with other cereals, are generally considered as exhausting crops, and a summer fallow is looked upon as a means of increasing or restoring the fertility of the soil ”

“ Where the plants do not winter-kill, they are plowed down for green manure when in bloom in May, or earlier in the spring to save soil moisture and permit early planting, although a good hay for livestock can be made, and the yield is about the same as that of the first crop of red clover. ”

“ For instance, a man carts on his light thin soil hot fermenting manure from the horse-stable, and plows it under. Seeds are planted. In the moist, cool, early spring they make a great start, feeling the impulse of the powerful stimulant. There is a hasty and unhealthful growth; but long before maturity the days grow long and hot, drought comes, and the garden dries up. ”