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VOL. XXIX. INDIANAPOLIS, IND. JUNE 9, 1894. NO. 23. MANAGEMENT OP CLAY SOILS. PRIZE ESSAY NO. 14. • Although a very recent subsariber for your excellent paper, and then in the name of my daughter, Florence, I feel that I must give your readers the benefit of my experience on a piece of about three acres of heavy freestone land, and badly worn out by long cultivation without improvement. Many years ago when I had a fruit farm on a high sandstone ridge, where the laud would run together from heavy rains, I had an old life long farmer in my employ who induced me to give the management of the oats patch up to him, that he might show me what oats he could raise on three acres if he had his own way about it. He had also a vanity for demonstrating how much more practical a regular farmer is when it comes to growing crops than a mere "book farmer." After some agru- ments I gave up and let him have his way, and he hauled out the manure that had accumulated through the year from one horse and a cow, and scattered over the ground, and plowed it under with a turning plow. Then he sowed it in oats broadcast and harrowed it in all nicely. This was all against my own judgment, but being a denist by profession and only a "book farmer" agriculturally, I submitted to Lib, reasoning, which was that the manure being buried at that depth was bound to keep moist all through the summer and at the same time be placed right where the oats roots would go to draw nourishment for the growing plants. The old farmer's reasoning all seemed nice enough at the time, but the oats never come to anything and the crop was not harvested—an entire failure. I hated awful bad to lose the benefit of this fine lot of manure which is prized so highly here on the poor hills of Southern Indiana, so in the fall I had the oats patch plowed with a turning plow to get the manure back on top again, where I thought it should have been left in the first place for the oats crop, and I had it sown to rye and all harrowed in nicely. But the fertilizing properties must all have been smothered and killed out of the manure by the weight of the heavy, close soil lying on it all summer, which had been melted and run together by the spring rains. The proof that it was killed was that my rye did no good at all. I do not think there was any plant food left in that manure for the rye—it was absolutely killed. The winter following this oats crop failure, I decided on carrying out my own notions for raising oats on that poor, heavy soil, if I was only a "book farmer," and I had a patch of ground about the size of the first oats patch, and the same sort of land in the same field, turned over with a turning plow about the last days of December, the ground being a little frozen at the time. This ground laid in the rough all winter, as the plow left it, and first nice day in March I had it harrowed down smooth and the year's accumulated manure spread over it, and sown broadcast to oats and all harrowed in together. The oats came up and grew off strong, and I had as good a crop as I ever saw in this county, fully verifying my notions for the treatment of our heavy clay soil. Now I do not claim to have carried on much farming myself; have not worked on one, excepting the fruit farm I spoke of, since the days of my boyhood, which is a long time ago, but my mind has all run on that subject, and I have been a very close observer, probably more so than farmers generally themselves, having continually been the owner of one. I have observed that spriDg plowing and plowing ground when wet any time through the summer is ruino"s to it, and should be avoided if possible. It makes heavy clay land hard, crusty and lifeless, the truth of which I verified to my own mind without a doubt by experiments I made on the aforesaid fruit farm. One year I leased my psach orchard of four-year-old trees to an old friend, and by the way an old farmer, on the halves and in the bargain he was to plow and harrow the orchard over once to cultivate the trees. He was decidedly in favor of cultivating the trees in the spring, and I was as fully decided that the cultivation should be done in the winter, so we compromised the matter by plowing one-half of the orchard to suit each of us—one-half was plowed in December and the other half in April, and the result was overwhelmingly in my favor. The peaches that grew on the winter-plowed part were worth twice those on the spring plowed and the trees kept green a month later. This poor heavy clay soil, I believe is much more sensitive to scientific management than rich loamy lands, and therefore I doubt if every farmer can appreciate what I say concerning my experiments which were on very poor land, containing but a small amount of plant food within itself. To make a long story short, I say that for spring planting, heavy clay soils should be turned up roughly as late in the fall or winter as possible, to kill out the noxious insects and their eggs that Are found buried in the ground at that season, and to let the ground get well aired and frozen at a time of year when the hot sun will not injure it and because it can be pulverized early in the spring for planting simply leveling it off with a harrow, and thereby avoid the necessity of stirring it again before late in May, when it will be dried out and can be stirred without injury to the land. Manures or commercial fertilizers should be spread and harrowed in on the surface for if plowed in, the heavy soil will run together and smother out and destroy the fertilizing properties; and it should be done early in the spring that they may have time to incorporate their fertilities with the soil before the hot sun comes to dry up and evaporate them. PRIZE ESSAY NO. 15. We have many patent medicines that olaim to cure all manner of diseases, under any and all circumstances. Not so with our clay soil. We cannot adopt any iron clad rule to be goverened by in the pulverizing and cultivating of our clay soil, but it requires much judgement and the use of the means best calculated to bring about the required result under present circumstances. The season, whether wet or dry, has much to do with this subject. But as everything has to have a beginning and it is very important to begin right, I would say if there is much litter on the ground it should be broken ln the fall. Why? 1st. Because it is more of a leisure time. Teams are more able and 2d. the most important reason is that the litter turned under will be well rotted in good time for food for the corn. The litter turned under will prevent the undersoil from packing and should the top of the ground become somewhat packed we have plenty of harrows, such as spading, disc spring tooth, so that a good seed bed can be easily made. 3d. It destroys all insects and all seeds of weeds. 4th. The crop is much easier cultivated. If the ground is clear of litter I would not break until spring and be careful not to break until sufficiently dry. Being well drained is of great 'importance to make the ground easy to pulverize. As to best way to pulverize clay soil, as I have said before, it depends altogether upon the season; if dry and the surf<ice hard use a harrow that will cut it up and a heavy roller to mash the clods. If the ground is fresh broke and sufficiently moist to pulverize easily no better plan could be adopted than to use a spring tooth harrow and drag. What we want is a thoroughly pulverized and packed seed bed. Why do we want it pulverized and then packed? 1st. Because it retains more moisture. If a dry season the moisture from |below has a better chance to climb to the surface. 2d. It permits the roots of the corn to came in contact with the soil that they may draw therefrom such chemicals as are necessary to made a rapid top growth. If the soil is left cloddy or very loose the roots will not come in contact with so much of it. Planting should be done early as the season will admit. Watch nature, and when you see the trees begin to show green, corn will grow. The depth of planting should not be more than one and a half to two inches, if the ground is moist; if dry, deeper. The soil must have moisture to sprout the corn, and if checked rowed it is very important that it be straight both ways. Plant two stalks to the hill. The yield is often cut short by leaving corn too thick in the hill, or if drilled, too thick in the row. Cultivating should begin before the corn comes up, and should be done with a two-horse cultivator, with five small shovels on each plow. I use the Eagle Claw, made at Mton, HI. They have breakpins and do much better work and run much steadier than any plow fixed on springs, round or flat. The cultivation should be shallow and level, and often enough to keep the surface clean and loose, which serves as a blanket to retain the moisture. Never let your plow run deep enough to break the roots. They are the life of the stalk. Cultivate until the corn gets too tall to straddle the row without breaking the corn. With such seasons as the past a drag would be a good substitute for the last working. Some of my neighbors the past season made almost a complete failure in corn, caused by plow'ng too close and deep, while fields adjoining and no better soil with shallow cultivation made a fair crop. Cost of a Bushel of Wheat. ] Epi.Toits Indiana Farhbb: W. W. Stevens certainly states the real cause of the great depression in the wheat market, when he says that "wheat is produced in excess of the world's demands." He also states a great fact that will be much more evident in the future than now, when he says that "wheat can be produced in other parts of the world in unlimited quantity," almost. We may as well face the fact. Can we afford to raise wheat for 50 cents? If not, we had better try some other crop instead. The Senate committee, of which Mr. Pef- fer is chairman, in its report, February, 1894, on the "Depression in Agriculture," gives the cost of producing a bushel of wheat in various localities, the lowest being upon the "bonanza" farms of California and Dakota—California being 22 cents, and Dakota next, 35 cents; Kansas ranks next higher, 50 cents. Then New York and Pennsylvania 65 cents. There is no report from Indiana, but Illinois estimates the cost at 72 cents, and Ohio at 84 cents. Our State being located between the two latter, we suppose our average cost of producing a bushel of wheat should be 78 cents. If these estimates are correct, then, without doubt, certain bankruptcy in the near future awaits those who persist in growing wheat. Possibly these figures include, besides actual cost, the rental value of the land, interest upon investment, also a reasonable profit in addition. Upon these points the report does not inform us. The cost muBt ever vary with the price of labor, adaptability of soil, amount of labor expended in cultivation and yield per acre. The cost of seeding is much less in corn ground than stubble or fallow, but the yield is usually also less; so that in the end the profit or loss is about the same. The preparation of ground for seeding iB done at a time when most horses upon the farm would otherwise be idle. We submit the following estimates for corn ground, assuming 15 bushels to be an average crop. Last season ours made over 10 bushels, (30 acres), the year preceding 23A bushels, (35 acres). Our highest upon corn ground was 28 bushels: Seeding, allowing six acres per day.— Dragging wheel, one boy 50 cents, one horse 50 cents] f 1; drilling, one man, f 1 25, one horse 50 cents, $1 75; seed, nine bushels, 55 cents, $4 95; use of tools per acre 5 cents, 30 cents; breaking stalks per acre 10 cents, 60 cents; total cost of six acres, I8 60; total cost of one acre, $1 43. Harvesting (14 acres per day).—CuttiDg 14 acres, 50 cents per acre, $7 00; twine, 21 pounds, 10 cents per pound, $2 10; shocking, two men $1 75, f3 50; cost of 14 acres f 12 60; cost of one acre 90 cents. Stacking (20 acres) —Two men and teams, $6 00; three men (extra), $5 25; cost of 20 acres, f 1125; cost of one acre, 56 cents. Thrashing and stacking straw (cyclone). —750 bushels per day 334 cents per bushel, f26 25; eight men one day, $1 75 per day, (14 00; two wheat haulers and teams, f 6 00; one extra shoveler, $1 75; board for five thrashers, 50 cents per day, $2 50; fuel, |3 50; total thrashing 750 bushels, |:!4 00; cost of one acre, 15 bushels, $ 1 08; total cost of one acre, $3 97; cost of one bushel about 26A cents. Deduct from this the value of the straw if sold to the paper mill, per acre 50 cents, the net cost per acre would then be $3 47, and net cost per bushel about 23 cents. Under favorable circumstances this cost may be redaoed. Those who thrashed from the shock last season saved much of the expense of stacking. Again, we estimate 750 bushels a day's thrashing, with pay of men and board accordingly. Last season we had 835 bushels thrashed in less than three-fourths of a day. Where neighbors assist each other in thrashing, so that no fancy priced wages have to bo paid, the cost is lessened. Prof. Huston, of our experiment station, estimates the wheat straw of Indiana to be worth—for fertilizing purposes—$6,000,000. We find the acreage to be (round numbers) 3,000,000, that would make the straw worth $2 per acre, less the cost of fermenting and distributing upon the land; allowing this expense to be one-fourth, that would leave the net value of the straw $1 50 per acre. If we deduct $1 50 instead of 50 cents from the total above we have $2 47 as the net cost of one acre of 15 bushels, and about 1634 cents as cost of one bushel. A larger yield, 20 or 30 bushels, if the proportion of straw to wheat be the same, will reduce the cost per bushel of harvesting and threshing but very slightly except in the item of cutting per acre. But it will reduce the cost of seeding per bushel and increase the rental value of the laud. If the seeding of one acre of 15 bushels costs as above, $1,43, that is about 934 cents per bushel; a yield of 20 bushels would cost a little over 7 cents and 25 bushels would cost only about 5% cents. Another matter to be taken into account is that 50 cents will purchase about as much of the essentials and luxuries of life as 75 or 80 cents would 10 or 15 years ago. This is specially true of most farm implements, binders, plows, cultivators, buggies, etc., and household goods as well. Our conculsion is that where the soil is reasonably adapted to growing wheat it can be raised with profit—though not large —for 50 cents and that its cultivation will pay the men and teams employed as good or better wages than they oould obtain upon public works and if the yield be good also a fair rental for the land. Shadeland. Ct. M. BlackstocK.
Object Description
Title | Indiana farmer, 1894, v. 29, no. 23 (June 9) |
Purdue Identification Number | INFA2923 |
Date of Original | 1894 |
Subjects (LCSH) |
Agriculture Farm management Horticulture Agricultural machinery |
Subjects (NALT) |
agriculture farm management horticulture agricultural machinery and equipment |
Genre | Periodical |
Call Number of Original | 630.5 In2 |
Location of Original | Hicks Repository |
Coverage | United States - Indiana |
Type | text |
Format | JP2 |
Language | eng |
Collection Title | Indiana Farmer |
Rights Statement | Content in the Indiana Farmer Collection is in the public domain (published before 1923) or lacks a known copyright holder. Digital images in the collection may be used for educational, non-commercial, or not-for-profit purposes. |
Repository | Purdue University Libraries |
Date Digitized | 2011-03-11 |
Digitization Information | Original scanned at 300 ppi on a Bookeye 3 scanner using internal software. Display images generated in CONTENTdm as JP2000s; file format for archival copy is uncompressed TIF format. |
Description
Title | Page 1 |
Subjects (LCSH) |
Agriculture Farm management Horticulture Agricultural machinery |
Subjects (NALT) |
agriculture farm management horticulture agricultural machinery and equipment |
Genre | Periodical |
Call Number of Original | 630.5 In2 |
Location of Original | Hicks Repository |
Coverage | Indiana |
Type | text |
Format | JP2 |
Language | eng |
Collection Title | Indiana Farmer |
Rights Statement | Content in the Indiana Farmer Collection is in the public domain (published before 1923) or lacks a known copyright holder. Digital images in the collection may be used for educational, non-commercial, or non-for-profit purposes. |
Repository | Purdue University Libraries |
Digitization Information | Orignal scanned at 300 ppi on a Bookeye 3 scanner using internal software. Display images generated in CONTENTdm as JP2000s; file format for archival copy is uncompressed TIF format. |
Transcript |
VOL. XXIX.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND. JUNE 9, 1894.
NO. 23.
MANAGEMENT OP CLAY SOILS.
PRIZE ESSAY NO. 14. •
Although a very recent subsariber for
your excellent paper, and then in the
name of my daughter, Florence, I feel that
I must give your readers the benefit of
my experience on a piece of about three
acres of heavy freestone land, and badly
worn out by long cultivation without improvement.
Many years ago when I had a fruit farm
on a high sandstone ridge, where the laud
would run together from heavy rains, I
had an old life long farmer in my employ
who induced me to give the management
of the oats patch up to him, that he might
show me what oats he could raise on three
acres if he had his own way about it. He
had also a vanity for demonstrating how
much more practical a regular farmer is
when it comes to growing crops than a
mere "book farmer." After some agru-
ments I gave up and let him have his way,
and he hauled out the manure that had accumulated through the year from one
horse and a cow, and scattered over the
ground, and plowed it under with a turning plow. Then he sowed it in oats broadcast and harrowed it in all nicely. This
was all against my own judgment, but being a denist by profession and only a
"book farmer" agriculturally, I submitted
to Lib, reasoning, which was that the manure being buried at that depth was
bound to keep moist all through the summer and at the same time be placed right
where the oats roots would go to draw
nourishment for the growing plants. The
old farmer's reasoning all seemed nice
enough at the time, but the oats never
come to anything and the crop was not
harvested—an entire failure.
I hated awful bad to lose the benefit of
this fine lot of manure which is prized so
highly here on the poor hills of Southern
Indiana, so in the fall I had the oats patch
plowed with a turning plow to get the
manure back on top again, where I
thought it should have been left in the
first place for the oats crop, and I had it
sown to rye and all harrowed in nicely.
But the fertilizing properties must all
have been smothered and killed out of the
manure by the weight of the heavy, close
soil lying on it all summer, which had
been melted and run together by the
spring rains. The proof that it was killed
was that my rye did no good at all. I do
not think there was any plant food left in
that manure for the rye—it was absolutely
killed.
The winter following this oats crop failure, I decided on carrying out my own
notions for raising oats on that poor,
heavy soil, if I was only a "book farmer,"
and I had a patch of ground about the size
of the first oats patch, and the same sort of
land in the same field, turned over with a
turning plow about the last days of December, the ground being a little frozen at
the time. This ground laid in the rough
all winter, as the plow left it, and first
nice day in March I had it harrowed down
smooth and the year's accumulated manure spread over it, and sown broadcast to
oats and all harrowed in together. The
oats came up and grew off strong, and I
had as good a crop as I ever saw in this
county, fully verifying my notions for the
treatment of our heavy clay soil.
Now I do not claim to have carried on
much farming myself; have not worked
on one, excepting the fruit farm I spoke
of, since the days of my boyhood, which
is a long time ago, but my mind has all
run on that subject, and I have been a
very close observer, probably more so
than farmers generally themselves, having
continually been the owner of one. I
have observed that spriDg plowing and
plowing ground when wet any time
through the summer is ruino"s to it, and
should be avoided if possible. It makes
heavy clay land hard, crusty and lifeless,
the truth of which I verified to my own
mind without a doubt by experiments I
made on the aforesaid fruit farm.
One year I leased my psach orchard of
four-year-old trees to an old friend, and
by the way an old farmer, on the halves
and in the bargain he was to plow and
harrow the orchard over once to cultivate
the trees. He was decidedly in favor of
cultivating the trees in the spring, and I
was as fully decided that the cultivation
should be done in the winter, so we compromised the matter by plowing one-half
of the orchard to suit each of us—one-half
was plowed in December and the other
half in April, and the result was overwhelmingly in my favor. The peaches
that grew on the winter-plowed part were
worth twice those on the spring plowed
and the trees kept green a month later.
This poor heavy clay soil, I believe is
much more sensitive to scientific management than rich loamy lands, and therefore
I doubt if every farmer can appreciate
what I say concerning my experiments
which were on very poor land, containing
but a small amount of plant food within
itself.
To make a long story short, I say that
for spring planting, heavy clay soils
should be turned up roughly as late in the
fall or winter as possible, to kill out the
noxious insects and their eggs that Are
found buried in the ground at that season,
and to let the ground get well aired and
frozen at a time of year when the hot sun
will not injure it and because it can be
pulverized early in the spring for planting
simply leveling it off with a harrow, and
thereby avoid the necessity of stirring it
again before late in May, when it will be
dried out and can be stirred without injury to the land.
Manures or commercial fertilizers
should be spread and harrowed in on the
surface for if plowed in, the heavy soil
will run together and smother out and destroy the fertilizing properties; and it
should be done early in the spring that
they may have time to incorporate their
fertilities with the soil before the hot sun
comes to dry up and evaporate them.
PRIZE ESSAY NO. 15.
We have many patent medicines that
olaim to cure all manner of diseases, under
any and all circumstances. Not so with
our clay soil. We cannot adopt any iron
clad rule to be goverened by in the pulverizing and cultivating of our clay soil,
but it requires much judgement and the
use of the means best calculated to bring
about the required result under present
circumstances. The season, whether wet
or dry, has much to do with this subject.
But as everything has to have a beginning
and it is very important to begin right, I
would say if there is much litter on the
ground it should be broken ln the fall.
Why? 1st. Because it is more of a leisure
time. Teams are more able and 2d. the
most important reason is that the litter
turned under will be well rotted in good
time for food for the corn. The litter
turned under will prevent the undersoil
from packing and should the top of the
ground become somewhat packed we have
plenty of harrows, such as spading, disc
spring tooth, so that a good seed bed can
be easily made. 3d. It destroys all insects
and all seeds of weeds. 4th. The crop is
much easier cultivated.
If the ground is clear of litter I would
not break until spring and be careful not
to break until sufficiently dry. Being
well drained is of great 'importance
to make the ground easy to pulverize.
As to best way to pulverize clay soil, as
I have said before, it depends altogether
upon the season; if dry and the surf |
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