MAINTAINING FERTILITY.

Northern Advocate, 10 March 1888, Page 4

MAINTAINING FERTILITY.

Mr John Tucker is right in showing that the plough is a detriment. Next to fire, and to our axes, cattle, sheep and goats, it does the most toward reducing the soil from fertility to barreness. But like other destructive agencies, we can use these with beneficial instead of wasting or fatal effect, if we have learned enough about their consequences, and employ them with reasonable care and prudence. Grass is the mainstay of all soil-culture; the most copious and frequent manuring is but a temporary and incomplete benefit. The land now, as in the days of Moses, must have its rest. Mr Bull rests his market garden every five years ; the Jews (Leviticus, xxv, 4) were required to rest theirs every seven years. English farm leases always strictly forbid ploughing ftp of meadow-land. Even there, where grass grows so well, it is found by I general and old experience that a piece of land seeded to grass, and kept in the best care, does not become profitable meadow under twenty years. By the time the decay of stems, blades, etc., has recoated the surface with the essential humus. — [Blairco.]