1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



807 



High-pressure Gardening 



By A. I. Root 



HIGH-PRESSURE CORNFIELDS AND — HIGH- 

 PRESSURE RATS. 



On page 572, Sept. 1, I closed my article 

 on cornfields by saying, "If you can come 

 and take a look at our cornfield to-day you 

 will see that I practice what I preach." 

 When I wrote that, my cornfield, especially 

 the part of it that was planted early, as I 

 have before explained, was about the best 

 of anything in the region roundabout. The 

 great heavy ears were bending over toward 

 the ground, and the whole field of several 

 acres was making a pretty fair show, al- 

 though we did lose quite a little money by 

 not getting the whole field planted just as 

 soon as it was marked and ready to plant, 

 as I have before explained. Well, a few 

 days ago I said the corn was ready to cut, 

 especially the two acres planted first; and 

 yesterday, Sept. 19, our men went out and 

 commenced cutting. After they had been 

 at work a little while I went down to give 

 directions for saving the ears of seed corn. 

 Just a few days before, Mr. Calvert gave me 

 notice that the birds were making fearful 

 havoc on that corn. When I got over to 

 the edge of the field and saw ear after ear 

 with the husks stripped back, and a great 

 part of the grain gone, something seemed to 

 say to me that this was tiot the work of 

 birds. I began walking carefully out into 

 the field, speculating meanwhile as to what 

 sort of animal could be eating the corn that 

 way; and then all at once I saw a big rat at 

 work on an ear of corn. He was big and fat 

 because he was a "corn-fed " rat. I thought 

 at first he must be i muskrat from the creek 

 near by; but as he turned around and climb- 

 ed down the cornstalk I was satisfied he was 

 simply a splendid specimen, in excellent 

 condition (?) of the common rat described 

 in the bulletin from the Department of Ag- 

 riculture, which tells us that rats are rob- 

 bing our farmers of over one hundred mil- 

 lion dollars a year. At the rate this gang 

 of rats was eating up and damaging my nice 

 corn, I could readily imagine that the loss 

 might be up near that enormous figure, espe- 

 cially if this work is going on all over the 

 land. 



Let me remark right here that our build- 

 ings are all made now with cement floors — 

 barn and stable and cellars — so that the rats 

 are practically barred out. These rats were 

 doing the work out in the field at quite a 

 little distance from any house or barn. Re- 

 membering what was said in Gleanings a 

 short time ago about feeding rats on corn 

 meal and j^laster of Pais, I at once prepared 

 a batch and placed it on wooden dishes in 

 different parts of the field. While doing 

 this I investigated a little more closely. In 

 several places these rats had picked out the 

 chit or germ of the kernel, and dropped the 

 rest on the ground. With rat shrewdness 



they had discovered where the best and 

 most nutritious part of the corn lay; and 

 good nice yellow grains of corn were scatter- 

 ed all over the field on the ground with 

 just the chit torn out. This being the 

 case, how much attention will the rats be 

 likely to give to my corn meal and plaster 

 of Paris? The only thing we can do under 

 the circumstances is to husk the corn as 

 soon as it can possibly be done, and get it 

 in our metal corncrib made of perforated 

 galvanized iron. I should like to ask some 

 of the old farmers who read our journal what 

 one is to do in such a predicament. Per- 

 haps several good rat terriers taken down 

 into the cornfield would help matters; but 

 it looks to me just now as if it would take a 

 lot of dogs to take care of the business. 

 And what shall we do with the dogs after 

 we get through harvesting our corn? 



Several days after I put out the corn meal 

 and plaster the rats seemed to have vacat- 

 ed. As blackbirds were troubling at the 

 same time, sometimes in flocks of about a 

 thousand, we sent a boy down with a shot- 

 gun. Well, the shotgun not only frighten- 

 ed away the birds, but it probably helped 

 by frightening off the rats too. So shot- 

 guns and a boy may sometimes be a pretty 

 good combination after all. But the gun 

 should always be in the hands of a very 

 careful boy. In speaking about dogs, it 

 just now occurs to me that, if we had a gas- 

 oline dog, something as we have a gasoline 

 horse (that is jaow so rapidly taking the 

 place of tlie real horse), it would be an ad- 

 vantage. We would not be required to fur- 

 nish said dog "board and lodging," when 

 he is not needed. 



Later. — Since the above was put in type 

 the corn has been husked and put in the 

 crib. From that part of the field that was 

 planted first, the very day it was marked 

 out, some of the shocks gave 2>^ bushels 

 each, but the other part of the field, plant- 

 ed later, was put back by bad weather, and 

 did not come anywhere near the part just 

 mentioned. After planting three times in 

 the effort to get a good stand, as a last re- 

 sort we filled vacancies with marrow beans, 

 and have to-day, Oct. 29, four bushels of 

 nice beans. You see the beans cost nothing 

 except planting and harvesting, for we 

 should have had to go through the motions 

 of cultivating just the same whether there 

 were any beans there or not. 



THE BLFEBERRY UNDER CULTIVATION; 

 child's WONDER berry, ETC. 



We are rejoiced to notice that the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture has finally succeeded 

 in growing larger and finer blueberries than 

 any found growing wild. See " the report 

 below: 



U. S. Department of Agriculture, ] 



Division of Publications, r 



Jos. A. Arnold, Editor and Chief. ) 



. EXPERIMENTS IN BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 



\n interestinc and significant feature in the ex- 

 periments reported in Bulletin 193, of the Bureau of 

 Plant Industry, just issued by the U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture, is the light shed on the possible util- 



