Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1869 — Agricultural and Domestic. [ARTICLE]

Agricultural and Domestic.

A few Facts in Fanning-. Put out potatoes early, all kinds. Put out ns warly as the ground will admit, and cover or ttix inches of dirt. Plant rows $7 inches apart, hills the .row 12 to 15 inches. Bow your oats as early as you ban well get them ih—on the first mellow groirthl. Put d<» not sow if only the top is mellow and the soil below wet. The oat is hardy,and will stand the cold Peas should also be sown early, and not on ground too rich, or that has been cropped with peas. Do not sow plaster, as there will be too great a growth of straw, which will flatten down and mildew, and defeat what otherwise might Lave been a good crop. Remember that gross lands need mojpture. They need it more than grain or almost any other plant. Irrigation is put first to secure this; thorough drainage, and mellowing the soil next; and a good close stand of a variety of grasses, is another help. As much a« may be put to grass select the moistest lots.

In changing a moist soil by drainage, you change its weeds. Drainage is death to many weeds. If your kind is worn out, many chances to one it will improve it by deep plowing—l mean till up to the beam.— This may not benefit it for a year or two. But it will not lie much worse than it was before, being worn out and nonpaying. A little manure thrown over it—and if it is much it will not hurt it—will prepare the ground, raw as it is, for grass. The sun and the manure, in connection with the rains, and the frost previously —for the land should be plowed in the fall —<will s<> ameliorate the top soil as to insure a good seeding and a fair crop. In a few yearn more, whether kept to grass or plowed, there will be an improvement for the better, and that decidedly, and it will be lasting, that is, it will have another run as it had before —and if underdrained and subsoiled, and thoroughly cultivated, will be better than ever before. This is experience with us. We tried it on a hill of some eight acres. The soil was drift with considerable clay in it, not rich naturally, Lut producing something beyond expenses, *Vc. For the first few years, after the soil was inverted, • there was .no growth, the crops were*a fail- - nre - After that they surpassed ~ the original productiveneS, and were more remunerative than before.—Zz ait -if / arm er.