Hay Making - With Information Cultivation, Sowing, Mulching and Other Aspects of Hay Making

ESTABLISHMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF HAY FIELDS.

THERE are many chemical questions relating to the cultivation of grass and the curing of hay which are still open for discussion. It would be extremely interesting, for example, to know precisely what kind of land is best suited for any given kind of grass, and why. Every farmer would be glad to know what kinds of grasses are best adapted to his own particular fields, and to know just what condition the soil should be brought to, in order to the utmost economy of production, both as regards fertility and fineness of tilth, and in respect to moisture at the moment of sowing and throughout the year.

Even the amount of seed to be sown on a given area is in some sort a chemical question, since the plants that spring from the seeds will struggle with one another for food, and will grow and feed differently, according as they are crowded or not. The depth at which the seeds should be buried manifestly depends on chemical considerations,—and it is, by the way, one of the most important points that the grass farmer has to consider.

How much and what kinds of manure should be applied to grass lands, and at what times, are other questions of very great importance; and so is the question in how far can the mulching of grass fields be made to supplement the process of manuring, or to make good a lack of manure.

The whole history of the growth of the crop, i. e. the knowledge of its condition and quality at different stages of growth, and the finding out of the best possible time for the cutting of grass, are matters which will be determined ultimately by the aid of chemical investigation.

So, too, with regard to the curing of hay, there are problems relating to the rapidity of drying, to the condition of dryness in which hay had best be housed, and to the comparative merits of storing it in barns or in stacks. It is still a matter of dispute among some farmers whether new-mown grass should be spread in the sun, or dried slowly in swaths, and windrows, and cocks.

Then, again, how shall mowing fields be taken care of, when once they have been established? Shall the sod be broken up every few years, or will it be well to try to keep the field in grass continuously for generations, as is sometimes done in Europe?

For the sake of convenience, it will perhaps be best to divide the study of grass husbandry into two sections, one of which shall relate to the hay crop proper, and the other to pastures and the care of them. And first as to hay, which is a highly important crop throughout the Northern United States.

Timothy preferred for Hay in America.

In New England, farmers have long been accustomed to look upon timothy (Phleum), or Herd’s-grass as the local name is, as the representative grass, and to hold that it combines all the excellences which are to be found in a grass. The utmost they are ready to admit is, that a mixture of timothy and red-top (Agrostis), or of timothy and clover, may sometimes be advisable. It is probable, however, that this notion includes a considerable amount of error, and that sooner or later the discovery will be made that there are several other grasses worthy of being cultivated in this region, each of them in the places best suited to it. It would be indeed strange if, among the three or four thousand kinds of grasses now known to botanists, there should happen to be no more than one or two kinds suited to the climate and requirements of the Northern United States.

Probably this wellnigh exclusive growth of timothy is largely a matter of fashion, akin to the preferences for Baldwin apples and Bartlett pears which prevail in the same locality. Perhaps this fashion will die out in time, as that for the varieties of fruit just mentioned assuredly will, to judge from past experience relating to other varieties of fruit that were formerly esteemed and are now obsolete. It is noticeable, even now, that many pomologists stoutly deny the suggestion that the Bartlett pear is a fine fruit. Nevertheless, it may still be well, especially when speaking to New Englanders or to their descendants in Western States, to regard timothy, or a mixture of timothy and red-top, as the normal grass for hay.

As will be shown directly, timothy has one great advantage, in that it yields a very heavy burden of fairly good hay. It succeeds well on rich loams, even on peaty loams that have been well mixed with sand or gravel; and although it needs a fair supply of moisture in order that it may do its best, it is still true that on occasion it can support drought better than several other of the cultivated grasses, such as the meadow foxtail (Alopecurus) for example. But timothy is not in the least adapted to support long-continued hardship, such as insufficient food or permanent lack of moisture, and it is a mistake to sow it on land subject to these conditions. There can hardly be any adequate profit in growing this grass on light dry land, where most of it will die out in the course of the second year.

Methods of preparing Land for Grass.

There are two or three different methods of laying down land to grass, from the consideration of which some ideas may be got as to the condition in which grass land needs to be kept. In the vicinity of Boston, the commonest method is to till the soil during two or three years with hoed crops which are well dressed with manure, and then to seed down to grass, either with or without an addition of grain. By the continued tillage, the soil is well pulverized, its capillary condition is improved, and the manure is distributed throughout the soil. But another way of proceeding is merely to plough under the sod of an old grass field that needs to be renovated, to work in some manure, and to sow grass seed immediately, without any other tillage than that needed to smooth the furrows, stir in the manure, and prepare a shallow seed-bed.

Inasmuch as the chief motive in breaking up any old mowing field is to kill or check wild grasses which have worked in, this method of simply turning under the sod may often serve a fairly good purpose, particularly on fields where the ground-water is not too far from the surface; and, if good, it is manifestly to be preferred to the other on many farms where hay is the chief crop. Wherever a fair profit can be got from corn, potatoes, roots, or other hoed crops, it would probably be best to interpolate such crops between the grass crops, according to the usual method, and thus charge the land with manure and bring it into a good state of fermentation; but it is none the less true, that the practices of most European countries where pastures and mowing fields are kept up for centuries, and are the more highly esteemed in proportion as they are older, go to show that rotation is in no wise essential for the successful cultivation of grass.

The partisans of the old method of seeding to grass after hoed crops, justly enough, urge the importance of bringing the land into an open, capillary condition. They insist on frequent ploughings as a preliminary to the seeding down of land, and there can be no question as to the benefits derivable from deep and thorough tillage in a climate so dry as ours. The power of tilling deeply and frequently is doubtless one of the merits of that system of seeding in which hoed crops precede the grass. But it is none the less plain, that the soil of many of the old European grass fields and pastures, on clay lands, for example, must be decidedly compact,—far more compact, indeed, than the soil would be after harrowing, and during the process of decay, on a field where the sod has been inverted.

The reproach is often made, it is true, against permanent grass lands, that since tillage and cultivation are notoriously beneficial to the soil, the lack of them must be hurtful, or at the least inadvisable. The argument is urged, that land which is never cultivated cannot be used to the best advantage, and that the exclusion of tillage from any particular fields can hardly be consistent with the most profitable use of those fields; and the same kind of objection will apply with a certain degree of force to the practice of seeding down to grass upon an inverted sod. But it may be answered to this claim, that it seems little short of absurd to break up old grass fields in situations not specially adapted for tillage,—such as steep, dry hillsides, for example,—when there is no urgent call to do so. In the supposed case, ploughing would destroy the native grasses, which have had no little trouble to work in and establish themselves, and, by the terms of the statement, the place is not well adapted for timothy or clover.

It has even been urged, sometimes, that the fact that the amount of organic matter (humus) is found to increase from year to year upon permanent meadows is an indication that the maintenance of such meadows must be irrational, since it shows that not enough air can come to the soil properly to oxidize its components. But there are several advantages derivable from permanent mowing fields that may much more than offset this particular objection, and in general it may be said that the small amount of labor required for the maintenance of permanent meadows would always give them precedence if it were but possible to get from them as large crops of hay as are grown upon new fields immediately after a year or two of tillage.

Stirring the Sod of Mowing Fields.

An experiment worth trying in certain cases, when seeding to grass on sod land, would be to run a subsoil plough through the furrows when the sod is turned. By so doing the objection as to inadequate tillage might be very much weakened, or perhaps wholly done away with.

The mere stirring of the sod of old grass lands has often been found beneficial. Thus a Massachusetts farmer reported some years since that he once, early in August, ploughed for half a day an old sod of 16 years standing, and during the next half-day occupied himself with his team and plough in turning this inverted sod back to its original position, i. e. grass side up. During the autumn, the piece thus ploughed grew green and strong, and could readily be distinguished from the rest of the field. Next year the crop of hay from the ploughed patch was at the rate of 1,300 lb. to the acre, while that from the adjacent unploughed land was at the rate of only 600 lb. to the acre. The good effects of this ploughing are said to have lasted during four years. Perhaps a part of the benefit obtained in this case may have come from the partial top-dressing of earth which the plough must have turned up, and it may be that the bringing up of buried seeds and the pruning of the grass roots were beneficial, but the inference is that the loosening of the soil was the principal advantage.

The question presents itself, whether, instead of turning the sods in this way, a considerable advantage might not be gained by running a subsoil plough directly through the grass, at stated intervals, across the field. A subturf plough has been invented and used in England for this purpose. But it has been suggested in this country, that, by putting a wheel on any good subsoil plough of moderate size, and running it through old sod to the depth of six inches or so, very effective work may be done at small cost for labor. The proposition was to make the cuts 12 or 14 inches apart in good growing weather in the spring.

It would probably be well to follow the plough with a smoothing harrow, to scatter a small quantity of seed, and to roll lightly. The plan deserves to be tried on fields that have been so long in grass that there is danger of the crops becoming bound out, as the term is; for it seems plain that any process of cultivation that can enable the soil to hold water to advantage, so that the crop may better withstand summer droughts, must be good for grass. There must be, in this sense, many fields where ordinary subsoil ploughing could be resorted to with advantage, just as, on the other hand, there are clay soils where the cost of tile drains would be repaid by the increased yield of grass.

Spring or Autumn Seeding.

The practices of farmers in Massachusetts with regard to the seeding of grass fields have changed considerably during the last fifty years. Formerly the spring was esteemed to be the best season for sowing grass seed, and this notion still persists in Maine. But nowadays late August or early September is very much preferred by most farmers in Massachusetts, excepting some exposed situations upon the seaboard, where there is little