In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book Farmer Boy (in her “Little House” series, it’s the only one not about her, but rather her husband’s childhood in upstate New York), there’s a part where the father makes his oldest son plow the winter’s first snowfall into all of the fields. It says something along the lines of “there’s something from the air” that makes it good for crops.
Is there any truth to this? As far as I know, the major ingredients of fertilizer are potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen. I see no reason why the first two would be in the season’s first snowfall. As for nitrogen, yeah, there’s plenty of N[sub]2[/sub] in the air, but it has to be fixed into ionic form before it’s any good for plants. Maybe there’s minute particles of something or other that caused the ice crystals to form in the first place, but I see no reason why the season’s first snowfall would be special. The only things I could think of were:
-plowing the snow into the earth helps ensure the ground will be moist
and
-the first snowfall is likely the easiest time to plow snow into the ground (considering the ground is probably not frozen)
Has anyone heard this bit of folk wisdom? Is there any truth to it?
Well, snow does have to accumulate on a particle of something.. I have no idea what is up there in the upper atmosphere for them to form onto, but I don’t think it’s potassium, phosphorus, or nitrogen.
It probably stems from the fact that if snow falls early in November, or late October, the grass is usually not-so-green, but then gets green after the snowfall, probably just from the water. Seeing this, a farmer would assume snow must be good for crops. This is just a WAG, though.
I can tell you that lack of snowfall significantly reduces the abundance/quantity of an alfalfa crop (it acts as an insulator), but all other crops on my family’s farm are planted annually.
The only other SWAG I can offer up is that manure is spread on our fields twice a year: in spring before planting and in fall after harvest. Maybe Pa was lazy that winter and didn’t get it plowed in before the first snow?
FWIW: In Swedish folklore it’s the last snowfalls of the season that count as fertiliser, hence an old saying: “aprilsnö är så gott som fåragö” = “snow in April is as good as sheep manure”.
This question reminded me of a literary sketch by Herman Melville which I read in Great Short Works of Herman Melville titled “Poor Man’s Pudding and Rich Man’s Crumbs” Here is an excerpt:
**"This snow, now, which seems so unseasonable, is in fact just what a poor husbandman needs. Rightly is this soft March snow, falling just before seed-time, rightly is it called ‘Poor Man’s Manure.’…
…Why, do you not remember the words of the Psalmist? – ‘The Lord giveth snow like wool;’ meaning not only that snow is white as wool, but warm, too, as wool. For the only reason, as I take it, that wool is comfortable, is because air is entangled, and therefore warmed among its fibres. Just so, then, take the temperature of a December field when covered with this snow-fleece, and you will no doubt find it several degrees above that of the air. So, you see, the winter’s snow itself is beneficent; under the pretense of frost- a sort of gruff philanthropist- actually warming the earth, which afterward is to be fertilizingly moistened by these gentle flakes of March."**
My guess is that the insulating effect of a late snow encourages germination.
