Leached Ashes. After the farmer's
family have made soap (as is a common
practice in a timbered country), there
remains a hopper full of leached ashes
which have a higher value as manure
than is generally believed. A writer
in the Country Gentleman tells his
readers that he has used an average of
2,000 bushels yearly, for the past seven
years ; at a cost of 25 cents per bushel
at the railroad station, about two miles
distant This he says may seem a
high price to many of your readers.
Yet we have found their use profitable.
Our hud is what would be termed
hard-weed soil the higher portion
gravel, the lower clay loam, inclined to
be coarse and lumpy. We have made
and saved all the yard manure we could
and have taken pains to increase onr
snpply. We plow and dress liberally
with this. After harrowing, apply 150
bushels of ashes to the acre, working
them well into the soil with the har
row. Then sow to grass. Where the
land is too high to sow grass seeds
alone, we sow in spring with oats, and
cut them in the milk for fodder, which
when well cured, makes excellent feed,
and leaves a good stand of grass. We
get from one and one-half to two tons
to the acre, for seven or eight years.
The first two or three or four years,
two crops are cut in a season. There
is great good sense in the above named
practice. In New England farmers pay
fifty cents a bushel for hard ashes that
have not been dipped.
