Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1869 — A Few Facts in Farming. [ARTICLE]

A Few Facts in Farming.

Per out potatoes early, all kinds. Put out as early as the ground will admit, and covey with five or six inches of dirt Plant rows 27 inches apart, hills in the row 12 to 15 inches. Sow your oats as early as you can well get them in—on the first mellow ground. But do not sow if only the top is mellow and tha soil below wet. The oat is hardy, and will stand the cold well. Peas should also be sown early, and not on ground too rich, or that has been cropped with peas. Dp not sow plaster, as there will be too great a growth of ttraw, which will flatten flown and mildew

and defeat what otherwise might hare been a goed crop. . . Ri'member that gross land* need moisture. They need it more than grain or almost any other plant. Irrigation is pat first to secure this; thorough drainage, and mellowing the soil next; and a good close stand of a variety of grasses, i another hqlp. As much as may be pat to ness select the moistesl lots. In changing a moist soil by drainage, you change its weeds. Drainage is death to many weeds. If your land is worn oat, many chances to one U will improve it by deep plowing—l mean till up to the beam. This may not benefit it for a year or two. Bat it will not bo much worse than it was before, being worn ont and non-paying. 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 foil—will so ameliorate the top soil as to insure a good seeding and a fair crop. In a few years ipore, 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 IraVe 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, but producing something beyond expenses. &c. For the first few years, after the soil was inverted, there was no growth, the crops were a failure. After that they surpassed the original productiveness, and were more remunerative than before.— ■‘F. Q." in Prairie Farmer.