How to Apply The Manure
Any manure but hog manure for cabbage,—barn manure, rotten kelp, night-soil, guano, fertilizers, wood ashes, fish, salt, glue waste, hen manure, slaughter-house manure. I have used all of these, and found them all good when rightly applied. My own practice is to use all my rich compost broadcast, and depend on guano, fertilizers, or hen manure in the hill. Let all guano, if at all lumpy, like the Peruvian, be sifted, and let all the hard lumps be reduced by pounding, until the largest pieces shall not be larger than half a pea, before it is brought upon the ground. My land being ready, the compost worked under and the rows marked out, I select three trusty hands who can be relied upon to follow faithfully my directions in applying so dangerous manure as guano is in careless or ignorant hands; one takes a bucket of it, and, if for large cabbage, drops as much as he can readily close in his shut hand, where each hill is to be; if for small sorts, then about half that quantity, spreading it over a circle about a foot in diameter; the second man follows with a pronged hoe, or better yet, a six-tined fork, with which he works the guano well into the soil, first turning it three or four inches under the surface, and then stirring the soil very thoroughly with the hoe or fork. Unless the guano (and this is also true of most fertilizers) is faithfully mixed up with the soil, the seed will not vegetate. Give the second man about an hour the start, and then let the third man follow with the seed.