g. And, finally, the cultivation and after-care should be
_prompt_, and given as soon as needed. Nothing is more conducive to
failure, after the crop is properly planted, than failure in promptness
in the cultivation and care required.

GENERAL REMARKS ON MANURING WITH GREEN CROPS.

Experience proves that no better method can be adopted to bring up lands
partially exhausted, which are remote from cities, than plowing under
green crops. By this plan the farmer can take lot after lot, and soon
bring all up to a high state of fertility. True, he gathers no crop for
one year, but the outlay is little; and if in the second year he gathers
as much from one acre as he formerly did from three, he is still
largely the gainer.

It costs no more to cultivate an acre of rich, productive land than an
acre of poor, unproductive land; and the pleasure and profit of
harvesting a crop that abundantly rewards the husbandman for his care
and labor are so overwhelmingly in favor of rich land as to need no
comment. Besides, manuring with green crops is not transitory in its
effects; the land remembers the generous treatment for many years, and
if at times lime or ashes be added to assist decomposition, will
continue to yield remunerative crops long after land but once treated
with stable manure or guano fails to produce any thing but weeds. The
skinning process, the taking off of every thing grown on the soil and
returning nothing to it, is ruinous alike to farm and farmer. Thousands
of acres can be found in various parts of the country too poor to pay
for cultivating without manuring. Of the capabilities of their lands
under proper treatment the owners thereof have no idea whatever. Such
men say they can not make enough manure on the farm and are too poor to
buy. Why not, then, commence plowing under green crops, the only manure
within easy reach? If fifty acres can not be turned under the first
year, put at least one acre under, which will help feed the rest. Why be
contented with thirty bushels of corn per acre, when eighty or one
hundred may be had? Why raise eight or twelve bushels of wheat per acre,
when forty may as well be had? Why cut but one half-ton of hay per acre,
when the laws of nature allow at least three? Why spend precious time
digging only one hundred bushels of potatoes per acre, when with proper
care and culture three or four hundred may easily be obtained? And,
finally, why toil and sweat, and have the poor dumb be