HERB - gardens, etc. -Dunging

[Norman White]

Jin Liu Ch'ang here putting on his mundane soil scientist hat:

Jasmine asked:
>Do we have any existing documents on soil during our >time periods or are we limited to what would be >covered in something like Markham's first half of >Country Contentments? Has anyone looked into >period examinations of farming?
I first hesitated to answer this because of the amount of space needed but decided to try possibly in a multi-part message.
Mundanely, I am a PhD soil scientist but it has been many years since agricultural history has been included in soils degree plans so I have to apply my modern learning to the statements in older books.  
My experience in this area is limited to Tusser and Thomas Hill.  I have never seen Markham.
Thomas Hill in his 1608 book "The Arte of Gardening" went into some detail about choosing a site for a garden and preparing a garden.  As the site is already chosen, I will in this post talk include his ideas about adding dung to the garden plot.  I hope I can condense it to only a moderately long post.
In Chapter 6, he advises the reader to add the dung in the fall for spring plantings and spring for fall plantings. In this way he allow the dung to decompose and mix well with the soil.  Five days before planting he advises, remixing the soil and dung so the dung will not be concentrated at the roots where it might harm the young plants.
The best dung was considered to be that from asses, as it contained less seeds, followed by cattle, oxen, sheep, and goats which was less than 1 year old.  He did not like swine or poultry manure because it was too hot (might burn the plants).  Ashes were also used especially for pot herbs as the natural heat refreshes the earth and the high concentration of salts released when wetted kills flies, bad worms, snails, etc.
If poultry manure is used, it should be scattered like seeds on the ground and not added in mass like cattle manure.
He also feel that wet ground needs more dunging than dry ground.

Jin Liu Ch'ang
m.k.a. Norman White
Dept. of Soil and Crop Sciences
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-2474
gn-white at tamu.edu
============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.