Word Finder - manures

definition

To cultivate by manual labor; to till; hence, to develop by culture.

definition

To apply manure (as fertilizer or soil improver).

example

The farmer manured his fallow field.

Without their aid most manures would be useless for plant growth.

Compost or animal manures offer other natural approaches toward improving soil quality.

Both the quantity and the quality of the produce, and consequently its feeding value, must depend greatly upon the selection of the best description of roots to be grown, and on the character and the amount of the manures, and especially on the amount of nitrogenous manure employed.

The cereal crops (wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize); the cruciferous crops (turnips, cabbage, kale, rape, mustard); the solanaceous crops (potatoes); the chenopodiaceous crops (mangels, sugar-beets), and other non-leguminous crops have, so far as is known, no such power, and are therefore more or less benefited by the direct application of nitrogenous manures.

It is equally true that, when under the influence of special local or other demand - proximity to towns, easy railway or other communication, for example - the products which would otherwise be retained on the farm are exported from it, the import of town or other manures is generally an essential condition of such practice.

This system of free sale, indeed, frequently involves full compensation by purchased manures of some kind.

Of nitrogen, the cereal crops take up and retain much less than any of the crops alternated with them, notwithstanding the circumstance that the cereals are very characteristically benefited by nitrogenous manures.

As to the source of the nitrogen of the root-crops-the so-called " restorative crops "-these are as dependent as any crop that is grown on available nitrogen within the soil, which is generally supplied by the direct appli cation of nitrogenous manures, natural or artificial.

Other important industries are wood-carving (of an artistic excellence long unknown), artistic iron-working, jewelling, bronze-casting, the production of steam-engines, machinery, matches (largely exported to Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Greece), clock-making, wool-weaving and the manufacture of chemical manures.

The tenant may have added to its value by buildings, by labour applied to the land, or by the use of fertilizing manures, but, whatever be the amount of the additional value, he is not entitled to any compensation whatever.

Metallurgical operations, such as smelting, roasting, and refining, were scientifically investigated, and in some degree explained, by Georg Agricola and Carlo Biringuiccio; ceramics was studied by Bernard Palissy, who is also to be remembered as an early worker in agricultural chemistry, having made experiments on the effect of manures on soils and crops; while general technical chemistry was enriched by Johann Rudolf Glauber.1

Since these compounds are essential to plant life, it becomes necessary to replace the amount abstracted from the soil, and hence a demand for nitrogenous manures was created.

This was met in a very large measure by deposits of natural nitre and the products of artificial nitrieres, whilst additional supplies are available in the ammoniacal liquors of the gas-manufacturer, &c. The possible failure of the nitre deposits led to attempts to convert atmospheric nitrogen into manures by processes permitting economic success.

Among other important articles of domestic industry are tobacco and cigars (manufactured mainly in bond, within the free harbour precincts), hydraulic machinery, electro-technical machinery, chemical products (including artificial manures), oils, soaps, india-rubber, ivory and celluloid articles and the manufacture of leather.

In the same address he called attention to the conditions of the world's food supply, urging that with the low yield at present realized per acre the supply of wheat would within a comparatively short time cease to be equal to the demand caused by increasing population, and that since nitrogenous manures are essential for an increase in the yield, the hope of averting starvation, as regards those races for whom wheat is a staple food, depended on the ability of the chemist to find an artificial method for fixing the nitrogen of the air.

Similarly soils with less than i% of nitrogen are likely to be benefited by applications of nitrogenous manures.

It is only when these conditions are attended to that decay and nitrification of dung, guano, fish-meal, sulphate of ammonia and other manures take place, and the constituents which they contain become available to the crops for whose benefit they have been applied to the land.

Lime also assists in the decomposition of the organic matter or humus in the soil and promotes nitrification; hence it is of great value after green manuring or where the land contains much humus from the addition of bulky manures such as farm-yard dung.

The more or less dormant nitrogen and other constituents of the humus are made immediately available to the succeeding crop, but the capital of the soil is rapidly reduced, and unless the loss is replaced by the addition of more manures the land may become sterile.

Green manures are crops which are grown especially for the purpose of ploughing into the land in a green or actively growing state.

The term coprolites has been made to include all kinds of phosphatic nodules employed as manures, such, for example, as those obtained from the Coralline and the Red Crag of Suffolk.

The industries comprise the manufacture of chemicals and artificial manures, granite polishing, flour and sawmills, bootand shoe-making, carriagebuilding and woollen manufactures.

Besides quarrying, the industries include granitepolishing, concrete (crushed granite) works, dye-works, papermills and artificial manures.

The stones were carefully cleared from the fields, which were also watered from canals and conduits, communicating with the brooks and streams with which the country " was well watered everywhere," and enriched by the application of manures.

Lime and marl are mentioned as common manures, and the former was sometimes spread on the surface to destroy heath.

The first half of the 17th century was a period of agricultural activity, partly due, no doubt, to the increase of enclosed farms. Marling and liming are again practised, new agricultural implements and manures introduced, and the new crops more widely used.

Nitrate of soda, Peruvian guano and superphosphate of lime in the form of bones dissolved by sulphuric acid were now added to the list of manures, and the practice of analysing soils became more general.

On the other hand, he had enjoyed the advantage of an extended supply of feeding-stuffs - such as maize, linseedcake and cotton-cake - and of artificial manures imported from abroad.

In the case of plants the method of procedure was to grow some of the most important crops of rotation, each separately year after year, for many years in succession on the same land, (a) without manure, (b) with farmyard manure and (c) with a great variety of chemical manures; the same description of manure being, as a rule, applied year after year on the same plot.

Experiments on an actual course of rotation, without manure, and with different manures, have also been made.

Amongst the field experiments there is, perhaps, not one of more universal interest than that in which wheat was grown for fifty-seven years in succession, (a) without manure, (b) with farmyard manure and (c) with various artificial manures.

The results show that, unlike leguminous crops such as beans or clover, wheat may be successfully grown for many years in succession on ordinary arable land, provided suitable manures be applied and the land be kept clean.

Mineral manures alone give very little increase, nitrogenous manures alone considerably more than mineral manures alone, but the mixture of the two considerably more than either separately.

Experiments upon the growth of barley for fifty years in succession on rather heavy ordinary arable soil resulted in showing that the produce by mineral manures alone is larger than that without manure; that nitrogenous manures alone give more produce than mineral manures alone; and that mixtures of mineral and nitrogenous manure give much more than either used alone - generally twice, or more than twice, as much as mineral manures alone.

Of mineral constituents, whether used alone or in mixture with nitrogenous manures, phosphates are much more effective than mixtures of salts of potash, soda and magnesia.

But the average produce over forty years of continuous growth of barley was, in all cases where nitrogenous and mineral manures (containing phosphates) were used together, much higher than the average produce of the crop grown in ordinary rotation in the United Kingdom, and very much higher than the average in most other countries when so grown.

Accordingly it is more susceptible to exhaustion of surface soil as to its nitrogenous, and especially as to its mineral supplies; and in the common practice of agriculture it is found to be more benefited by direct mineral manures, especially phosphatic manures, than is wheat when sown under equal soil conditions.

The exhaustion of the soil induced by both barley and wheat is, however, characteristically that of available nitrogen; and when, under the ordinary conditions of manuring and cropping, artificial manure is still required, nitrogenous manures are, as a rule, necessary for both crops, and, for the spring-sown barley, superphosphate also.

Although barley is appropriately grown on lighter soils than wheat, good crops, of fair quality, may be grown on the heavier soils after another grain crop by the aid of artificial manures, provided that the land is sufficiently clean.

By far the most satisfactory crops as green manures are those of the leguminous class, since they add to the land considerable amounts of the valuable fertilizing constituent, nitrogen, which is obtained from the atmosphere.

On the light, poor sands of Saxony Herr Schultz, of Lupitz, made use of serradella, yellow lupins and vetches as green manures for enriching the land in humus and nitrogen, and found the addition of potash salts and phosphates very profitable for the subsequent growth of potatoes and wheat.

After this treatment the upper 2 or 3 in, of soil are well pulverized, and fertilizers added, usually, to prevent reintroduction of seeds of weeds, in the form of guano or chemical manures.

Of the carbon dioxide and ammonia no exhaustion can take place, but of the mineral constitutents the supply is limited because the soil cannot afford an indefinite amount of them; hence the chief care of the farmer, and the function of manures, is to restore to the soil those minerals which each crop is found, by the analysis of its ashes, to take up in its growth.

On this theory he prepared artificial manures containing the essential mineral substances together with a small quantity of ammoniacal salts, because he held that the air does not supply ammonia fast enough in certain cases, and carried out systematic experiments on ten acres of poor sandy land which he obtained from thr town of Giessen in 1845.

Many of the oceanic islets are composed of coral limestone, which in this way becomes phosphatized; others are igneous, consisting of trachyte or basalt, and these rocks are also phosphatized on their surfaces but are not so valuable, inasmuch as the presence of iron or alumina in any quantity renders them unsuited for the preppration of artificial manures.

If artificial manures are used, a usual dressing consists of 2 or 3 cwt.

Tillage was also made compulsory, but this had little effect on production owing to the shortage of labour, draft animals, manures and agricultural implements, together with the oppressive restrictions caused by the fixing of maximum prices.

The potassiferous by-products are utilized for the manufacture of manures.

It is extensively employed for the preparation of other potassium salts, but the largest quantity (especially of the impure product) is used in the production of artificial manures.

It has an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, manufactories of gloves, patent leather, paper, metal ware and artificial manures, and a considerable trade in cereals.