On The Gravelling Of Clay Soils

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Title:     On The Gravelling Of Clay Soils
Author: Thomas Garnett [More Titles by Garnett]

There is an old story of a man, who, having a very stony field, determined to experiment on the value of these stones in the growth of his crops.

With this view he divided his field into three equal parts. From No. 1 he gathered all the stones, which he spread upon No. 3, leaving No. 2 in its original condition. He then sowed barley over the whole field, and carefully noted the results. The story ends by saying that No. 1 bore a miserably poor crop, No. 2 a tolerable one, and No. 3 a splendid one.

I quote this story as a text on which I wish to speak as to the advantage of gravelling heavy clay soils. Some weeks since I spent a few days at the village of Milnthorpe, in Westmoreland, and during one day with Mr. Hutton, the celebrated bone-setter, I remarked that the land was very stony, being covered with stones (not pebbles) having very much the appearance of road metal. He replied, that these stones were essential to the fertility of the soil, and said that some years before there was a great demand for such material in the neighbourhood of Preston, and the high prices stimulated the farmers to gather these stones from their land, and send them to Preston; but the consequences were so injurious to the growth of their crops, that they were compelled--at least those who had the means of doing so--to lead stones again upon their land before their crops would grow again with the vigour which they had before the stones were abstracted. This brought to mind what had occurred in my own farm practice. A church was built in the neighbourhood, and the stones for it were hewn on the corner of a field which was afterwards sown with wheat, and I remarked that the straw was much brighter, the ripening was forwarded ten days, and the sample was much better where the stones had been hewn than elsewhere in the field. (The stones of which the church was built were of ordinary sandstone, probably millstone grit.)

Borrowing from this hint, I had the field covered with about 400 cartloads of alluvial gravel (from the bed of the river) to the acre, and the land was then ploughed two furrows deep, one plough following the other. Previous to this gravelling, the land was a stiff, obdurate clay nearly to the surface. The subsequent effect was the doubling, or more probably trebling the value of the land, which has now become a nice friable soil.

I was much amused with the criticisms of some of the neighbouring farmers (men of the old school), one of whom remarked that he had seen land tilled (manured) in various ways before my time, but until now he had never seen a field tilled with cobble-stones. I said, "What is your objection to it, John?" "Why, ye see, it makes th' land so poor." I replied, "Making anything or anybody poor, means robbing them of something. If you had twenty shillings in your pocket, and I filled it up with these cobble-stones, how much poorer would you be? Of what have I robbed this field by putting gravel into it?" "Why, of nothing; but it looks so queer." I said, "John, did you never hear of a man gathering the stones off his field, and then having to lead them back again?" "Yes, I have; but then they were _natural_ to the soil." I said, "What does manuring land mean, but putting something into it of which it is deficient? You don't till a muck-midden. If in stony land stones are essential for the vigorous growth of the crop, is it not exceedingly probable that they will be still more beneficial on stiff land which has no stones in it?"

This is a doctrine I tried many years since to inculcate upon our friend Mechi, and some of his land (I speak of its condition twenty years since) needed such a gravelling as much as any land I ever saw. Whether he adopted my suggestion, or his land remains in the same condition now as then, I don't know; but if it does, I would just suggest to him and to all landed proprietors who own stiff clay lands, if they are near to gravel-pits, to try a small portion by gravelling it freely, and let us hear the results.

_December 2nd_, 1871.

[The end]
Thomas Garnett's essay: On The Gravelling Of Clay Soils

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