Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1875 — Top-Dressing Meadows with Barn yard Manure. [ARTICLE]

Top-Dressing Meadows with Barn yard Manure.

Late autumn is always the better period to top-dress meadows, for the reason that near the close of the growing season all fertilizing material that comes from decaying vegetation is then tending downward into the earth. Hence manure spread on the surface late in the fall will not be lost by evaporation to half the extent that the fertilizing elements will disappear if spread in the spring or in the summer. But this manure should be rotten thoroughly decomposed. Then there will be no heat to throw off the strength. Fermentation, which is well in the ground, is bad outside of it. But even in a raw state, drawn from the stable, manure, when closely applied to the surface, has its benefit —not so immediate. Fermentation must be gone through with before the manure is plant food; and the acrid nature of some manures will hurt grass and grain and impart a raw influence to the soil. To top-dress meadows successfully a very important thing is required—a thing that is too much neglected. It is to pulverize the manure and get it down on the ground. To leave the manure in heaps is of but little use. There is some strength the ground gets, but the lumps are an obstruction. This is a bad way, and should be discountenanced severely. Close to the ground, hugging it, becoming part of it—this is what is wanted. Then the soil, by its attraction, will get the strength. The rains will carry the fertilizing elements down at once. Nothing can be better than to take good barnyard manure, composted with muck or clay, and, when thoroughly mixed and decomposed, apply to the soil close to the ground, finely and evenly distributed. This gives our meadows what scarce any other treatment- can reach —a thick, excellent coat of grass. Repeated, this coat can be continued; and by and by, when it is wished to turn it down, there is nothing better. Corn will grow here if anywhere. We have known it to reach, in large lots, over eighty bushels to the acre, when otherwise it would yield but half that amount. A generous top-dressing with barnyard manure has a tendency to keep the ground moist. But the main points—the reliable, the important—are its effects upon meadows, upon grain and upon seeding. The effect of all this cannot be questioned. It is only said that some of the strength of the • manure ■will escape. This looks reasonable. There is little doubt but that some of the strength is lost. There is also little doubt had this manure been covered the strength would have been saved. This is all a plausible theory; nay, it is fact. When barnyard manure is scarce it will pay to sow bone dust on almost any meadow. We have lost all faith in most other commercial fertilizers. But swindlers cannot adulterate bone dust so readily as the phosphates.— N. Y. Herald.