CHAPTER X.

HOW TO MAKE MANURE.

If we have the necessary materials, it is not a difficult matter to make manure; in fact, the manure will make itself. We sometimes need to hasten the process, and to see that none of the fertilizing matter runs to waste. This is about all that we can do. We cannot create an atom of plant-food. It is ready formed to our hands; but we must know where to look for it, and how to get it in the easiest, cheapest, and best way, and how to save and use it. The science of manure-making is a profound study. It is intimately connected with nearly every branch of agriculture.

If weeds grow and decay on the land, they make manure. If we grow a crop of buckwheat, or spurry, or mustard, or rape, or clover, and mow it, and let it lie on the land, it makes manure; or if we plow it under, it forms manure; or if, after it is mown, we rake up the green crop, and put it into a heap, it will ferment, heat will be produced by the slow combustion of a portion of the carbonaceous and nitrogenous matter, and the result will be a mass of material, which we should all recognize as “manure.” If, instead of putting the crop into a heap and letting it ferment, we feed it to animals, the digestible carbonaceous and nitrogenous matter will be consumed to produce animal heat and to sustain the vital functions, and the refuse, or the solid and liquid droppings of the animals, will be manure.

If the crop rots on the ground, nothing is added to it. If it ferments, and gives out heat, in a heap, nothing is added to it. If it is passed through an animal, and produces heat, nothing is added to it.

I have heard people say a farmer could not make manure unless he kept animals. We might with as much truth say a farmer cannot make ashes unless he keeps stoves; and it would be just as sensible to take a lot of stoves into the woods to make ashes, as it is to keep a lot of animals merely to make manure. You can make the ashes by throwing the wood into a pile, and burning it; and you can make the manure by throwing the material out of which the manure is to be made into a pile, and letting it ferment. On a farm where neither food nor manure of any kind is purchased, the only way to make manure is to _get it out of the land_.

“From the land and from the atmosphere,” remarked the Doctor. “Plants get a large portion of the material of which they are composed from the atmosphere.”

“Yes,” I replied, “but it is principally carbonaceous matter, which is of little or no value as manure. A small amount of ammonia and nitric acid are also brought to the soil by rains and dews, and a freshly-stirred soil may also sometimes absorb more or less ammonia from the atmosphere; but while this is true, so far as making manure is concerned, we must look to the plant-food existing in the soil itself.

“Take such a farm as Mr. Dewey’s, that we have already referred to. No manure or food has been purchased; or at any rate, not one-tenth as much as has been sold, and yet the farm is more productive to-day than when it was first cleared of the forest. He has developed the manure from the stores of latent plant-food previously existing in the soil and this is the way farmers generally make manure.”