Virginia Argus

Agricultural

Letter to the Philadelphia County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures.

Gentlemen,

Our farmers in Pennsylvania have hitherto been too much in the practice of depending on the annual decoction of weeds, arising in a course of years from their worn out fields, for the principal source of nourishment to their crops. It is time a different plan should be adopted, if we expect to derive that advantage from our farms, which they will afford by a proper cultivation. This must be effected by giving the ground a full dressing of twenty large cart-loads of good manure to the acre, every seven or eight years; and adapting a rotation of productive crops during that period. In this system, clover is absolutely necessary, as forming the basis of the whole, and without which, no valuable plan of agriculture can be pursued. Clover well put in, and having a top dressing of Plaster of Paris, six bushels to the acre, will afford, the first year, three tons of good hay to the acre: the second year, it may be cut once, and afterwards pastured to the middle of October; the third year, it will afford excellent pasture to your hogs, sheep, and milch cows, during the summer. In the month of September, it may be ploughed, and immediately sowed with winter barley, and afterwards with wheat, or other grain, as best suits the inclination, or the interest of the farmer. A plantation, properly divided into fields, for such a rotation of crops, would annually afford a sufficiency of hay, pasture, and a variety of the most useful and profitable crops, without leaving a single acre of ground unproductive.

Considering clover as necessary to the best plan of conducting a farm, it is the duty of every real friend to this necessary science, to promote the cultivation of it. A great obstacle to the propagation of this valuable plant, arises from the extravagant price of the seed, owing to the difficulty of cleaning it. Could this difficulty be obviated, clover-seed might be sold at one half the price now demanded for it.

I beg leave to communicate to the society some information I lately received from Mr. Henry Wynkoop, on this subject. Mr. Wynkoop says, that, in the state of New York, where they have been long in the custom of raising clover seed for sale, after the hay is threshed, the heads of the clover are put into a hogshead, to which is added a sufficient quantity of water to moisten the whole, in order to induce a fermentation. The farmer should carefully attend to this critical operation, and suffer the fermentation to proceed only as far as to affect the capsules, or chaff, without injuring the seed. After the operation, the clover heads are spread on a barn floor to dry, when a slight threshing will easily extricate the seed. The Germans, in Lancaster county, procure the seed of timothy, by first submitting it to a slight degree of fermentation.—The hay, intended for seed, is bound in small sheaves, and then put up into a stack, having the heads damped with a little water, sufficient to produce a slight degree of fermentation, without injuring the seed.

The above plan appears to me reasonable. I shall therefore make a trial of it, and shall communicate the result of the experiment to the society. Other members doing the same, a comparison of our observations may tend to throw some light on the subject, and the publication of them, supported by the opinion of the society, may be attended with some advantage to our fellow citizens.

I am, &c.

GEORGE LOGAN.