Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 141, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1916 — MANURES AND MANURING [ARTICLE]

MANURES AND MANURING

Without the rather lavish use 6t manures, gardening is somewhat uncertain proposition, and full success often beyond reach. Right at. this time, when other garden work has come to an almost dead standstill, it behooves us to consider most serious ly the problems what manures to use for the production of next year’s cropo, where to get them and how and when to apply them. I rely on stable manures mostly. Unless filled with weed seeds, they are safe manures to apply to almost any crop at almost any time. If we know them to contain many live weed seeds, then of course, we must have resource to composting.. The fresh manure is piled up to heat, and to be worked oven and over from time to time so as to give all the seeds in It a chance to germinate and be killed. The process also gets the whole mass in best possible shape to be most intimately mixed with the soil, and to give up its plant foods most readily to the roots of plants. Weedless stable manures may be applied directly to the land, and winter Is a good time to haul it. Don’t he afraid to put It on heavy, even if the manure Is rather coarse. It will be all right in spring and in shape to be well mixed to, and much of the plant foods will have leAched out during winter and become absorbed by the soil and ready to feed the crops. There is very little danger of a material loss of plant foods by such application at the dormant season, even if the ground should be frozen solid. By composting the weedy stable manure we may lose a portion of the plant foods through fermentation evaporation and leaching. But we gain in other directions to make up for this loss. And if we mix a small quantity of acid phosphate with such manure or scatter this superphosphate over the compost heaps after every working over, the loss of ammonia will to a great extent be prevented. Many of us are in the position that we must buy plant foods. In what form is it best and most ad visible to get them? Ordinary, good stable manure contains to the ton about ten pounds of nitrogen, 4 of phosphoric acid and 8 of potash. At current rates of these chemicals, a ton of such manure is therefore worth a little over $2. In stable manure how ever, we also put into the soil something of particular value for garden crops, and something which chemical fertilizers do not supply, namely, hu mus with all Its qualities of improving the mechanical condition of the soil and of holding moisture for the use of crops. This one feature of stable manure of supplying humus, is often worth to the gardener as much as the actual plant foods contained in it.=If our soils are deficient in humus, it would not be wise to operate with chemical fertilizers alone, unless in combination with growing clovers or other legumes, such as cowpeas In the South, in occasional rotation My preference, as already repeatedly stated in these columns, is stable manure. On our clay loams I can secure better results from its use than by the application of fertilizers, so called. It is made, for the greatest part, on the place, and although of particularly good quality, the animals (cows and hgrses) being given good grain rations and much of the poultry manure being mixed with it it is still further improv ed by the additions of superphosphate already mentioned. The expense of manuring with stable manure is often less in the first cost than in the cost of application. If it has to be hauled very far, and the hauling - has to be paid for, this mode of feeding crops may be very expensive, and much more so than the use of fertilizers. Often we can get stable or stockyard manures materially cheaper than the real value of the plant foods contained in it, and if we have horses in th? stable, and help at our disposal with out having any urgent work at this time, securing and hauling manure will be the proper thing. If I could not procure animal manure at a reas onable cost, or°had to * pay regular rates for hauling it more than half a mile (our distance from railway starion) or a mile, I would find a way to get along by using concentrated fertilizers and clover alone, applying fairly heavy dressings of superphosphates and some potash to make heavy crops of clover, and then turning such clover sod, first or second, under for manure. Altogether this is a many sided Question and now is the time to consider it in all its different phases and bearings.