Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1874 — Reducing Bones for Gardens. [ARTICLE]

Reducing Bones for Gardens.

It is not often that bones can be collected on the farm in sufficient quantities for field crops, but every man who has a garden can make a lit tle excellent manure by saving those within his reach. It is useless to recommend converting them into home-made superphosphate by using sulphuric acid; the difficulty and trouble in procuring the acjd away from cities, and the care and 'experience required to use it, are sufficient objections. There are, how-ever, two modes of reducing the bones which every gardener may easily adopt. One is to place them in thin layers in a fermenting heap of manure, which, if they are previously broken, will soften them enough to cause crumbling after the lapse of weeks, when the heap is worked over. Even a common hot-bed will do, if the bones are first broken into fragments. The other mode is to boil them, as follows: Mix them in a large kettle with wood ashes, and to make the ashes caustic add about a peck of fresh lime to each barrel of bones. -Saturate and cover the ashes well with water, and then apply heat, say for twenty-four hours, or during the day for two consecutive days. All the bones by this time, except the very hardest parts, will be so reduced as to be easily pulverized, being in a pasty condition, suitable for placing in layers in making the compost heap. Another day’s boiling will reduce the remainder of the hard bones. —iV. T. World.