Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1869 — How to Keep Pastures in Good Condi tion. [ARTICLE]

How to Keep Pastures in Good Condi tion.

It is with a pasture as with a man, the* inedfne must be greater than the Expenses, or it grows poor. Crops are tlie expenses. It is quite possible to make the surface of any soil unproductive' and unprofitable; by carrying off more than ,ia put op. Pasturing with cows that are yarded at night docs this. Sheep of beeves that rethain upon the land, on the contrary, .return more than an equivalent in manure, and keep the land improving. Where plaster meets a want of the soil ,it may be kept improving by sowing broadcast a bushel and a hair to the acre every spring, and feeding off the grass. Many farms mi the grazing districts in the interior are kept up mainly by plaster and feeding. Some of them will carry a bullock: to the acre. Other lands need lime, and the lime.brings in clover, and this plant' by the large drafts it makes upon the subsoil and the atmosphere. always improves the pasture. tn other districts are accessible at reasonable rates, and they, are always a reliable top-dressing. The effects are visible on some soils in increased' crops of grass, for twenty years. Cheap: ashes will keep up any pasture, pay their cost, and leave a profit. So will homemade compost, if a man will but make and use it. Along the sea-board the old pastures need nothing better than creek-mud, Hod the Weeds thrown- upon the short. Too often these are allowed tp rot on the, sand for want of labor to gather them. Irrigation is available in other caseseand where the waters of a brook can be tinned over a pasture nothing more will be needed to keep it in ■ good ebndition. Changing soils oftentimes has a wonderful influence. Sometimes on the same field of twenty acres there will be sandy-or gtavel-' ly knolla nearly bare of vegetation, and hard clay or muck, in swales. A top-dress-ing of‘the sanct Would pay Oh the swales, and notliing could be better for the knolls than the muck dr clay. Our old pastures to be kept profitable must have something done for them. It will not pay to devote ten.acres, to,a single cow.— America/l Agriculturist. '