OCR Text |
Show Salt as Manure. In Europe and also in the eastern states, salt is sown in large quantities upon land, and the eflect has proved very beneficial, particularly on land that, has been manured, and which, (or the first year or two, produces a rank growth of straw unable to sustain its own , weight. This is one of the great objections ob-jections urged against the use of barnyard barn-yard manure ou wheat land, that it grows too much straw. Salt is not in itself a fertilizer, but, like lime, it acta as a dissolvent, and sets free the inert conditions of the soil and brings them into use. Sinclair says, fn a recent paper, that in some portions of England the yield of an acre has been doubled by the Iree use of salt. Crops of oats in our own country have shown the same good results. U is said that lands where salt was used were exempt from rust and smut, while the adjoining flslda were not exempt. If this be true, as scientific scien-tific farmers aflirni, here may be a valuable and cheap remedy for rust oa the low lands where the stalks grow rank and weak. Oa vegetables, in the New Jersey gardens, cspara-ZLis. cspara-ZLis. cabbaee. and esnpcialltf molnna salt water is freely used with a sprinkler. No precise rule ran be given, but the quantity should not 1 exceed in bulk the amount of grain sown, say 400 pounds of salt to 100 pounds of seed. |