Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology; On the improvement of the soil by mechanical means and by manures - James Finlay Weir Johnston, Paperback

• Release Date   5/19/2012
• ISBN-13   9781236196941 | 978-1-236-19694-1
• ISBN   1236196945 | 1-236-19694-5
• Format   Paperback
• Author(s)   James Finlay Weir Johnston
• This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 Excerpt: ...organic matter as it does from the soil, and that therefore it is admirably fitted for enriching the land on which it grows. 8. Red Glover is often ploughed in as a manure. On the Rhine it is sown for this purpose, being ploughed in before it begins to flower. In French Flanders two crops of clover are cut, and the third ploughed in, and in some parts of the United States of North America the clover which alternates with the wheat crop is ploughed in as the only manure. White Clover is not so valuable for this purpose, for neither is it so deep rooted nor does it yield so large a crop of stems and leaves. 9. Old grass.--Perhaps the most common form of green manuring practised in this country is that of ploughing up grass lands of various ages. The green matter of the sods serves to manure the after-crop, and renders the soil capable of yielding a richer return at a smaller expense of manure artificially added. In regard to all these forms of green manuring it is to be observed that they enrich the soil generally, and are therefore well fitted to prepare it for after-crops of corn. they will not fit it, however, for a special crop, such as turnips, which requires to be unnaturally forced or pushed forward at a particular period of its growth. § 4. Will green manuring alone prevent landjrom becoming exhausted? If by green manuring is meant the growing of vegetable matter upon one field, and ploughing it in green into another, as is sometimes done, it may be safely said that, when judiciously practised, land may by this single process be secured for an indefinite period against exhaustion. But if we plough in only what the land itself produces, 184 GREEN MANURING WILL NOT PRESERVE Barclay's Agricultural Tour in the United States. and carry off occasional ...