1895 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



415 



for raspberries, I think the wire need not be 

 more than 2,i.i feet above the ground. This 

 keeps them out of the dirt; and it is so low, if 

 you want to go " crosslots " you can hold the 

 wire down and straddle over it — that is, if you 

 are a man of average stature. 



One thing more about having your garden 

 with rows parallel to the brook. Of course, 

 said brook should be made to go straight 

 through your premises. You can not afford to 

 have it crooking as brooks usually crook. In 

 order to have it handy for irrigation, it is not 

 necessary that water should always be running 

 in the brook. Scoop out some holes at inter- 

 vals, and these will be filled at every summer 

 shower. By making them of sufficient depth 

 and length you can have water enough to keep 

 things going, even during a very severe drouth. 

 These remarks are intended, of course, only for 

 using the water so you can transplant during 

 very dry weather. After you get your stuff 

 well going, there is seldom much need of irri- 

 gation if you keep the cultivator constantly 

 moving, so as to preserve a mellow surface. 

 Besides, creek bottoms, as a general thing, 

 have more or less sand or gravel in their sub- 

 soils; and I have found this to be the case, even 

 in heavy clay soils. 



Have your brook arranged, however, with 

 ample outlet, so that, if you have a June fresh- 

 et, the water may not come clear over your 

 stuff. In order to get rid of the effects of 

 freshets. Champion Brook (through our ground) 

 is from 4 to 6 feet deep, and perhaps 10 feet 

 wide at the top, and 6 fnet wide at the bottom 

 of the channel. The sides are kept from cav- 

 ing in by means of cedar posts and hemlock 

 boards. As fast as we make tin scrap in our 

 tinshop it is packed down back of the boards, 

 so that, by the time they rot out. the tin scrap 

 will very likely have rusted together so as to 

 make a permanent wall to resist the effect of 

 high waters. Of course, we have to do more or 

 less cleaning-out of the brook every spring. 



About midway in the length of the brook, in 

 the center of our garden, we were lucky enough 

 to find a spring with sufficient force to raise the 

 water 15 or 20 inches in a large iron pipe driven 

 over this spring. This spring furnishes drink- 

 ing-water all through the summer, and near 

 where a great part of our work is done, and is 

 worth ever so many dollars to us every summer. 

 Now. if you have not a garden in your lowest 

 piece of ground, with a brook running through 

 it, you are missing lots of fun and lots of profit 

 to one who loves to work in the ground and see 

 things grow during a drouth. 



GETTING RID OF WEEDS IN THE PI.ANT-REDS. 



One of the expensive drawbacks in raising 

 vegetable-plants has been the weeding; and 

 one trouble with the weeding is, that the boys 

 get lazy, and lose interest when we set them to 

 picking out the weeds between the plants, es- 

 pecially if the beds are very weedy. You may 

 say we should not let the weeds go to seed. 

 Well, we don't let them go to seed. The stable 

 manure we are buying constantly, furnishes 

 fresh seeds; and there is no other fertilizer as 

 cheap and effective as stable manure. 



Now I will tell you how we worked this 

 spring. We have a larger area than heretofore, 

 and therefore we can spare the use of a bed 

 for a week or ten days better than when we 

 were cramped for room. Accordingly the beds 

 are made up as heretofore, the soil sifted so as 

 to have the finest and best dirt on top, the bed 

 nicely leveled over with a strip of board; and 

 then if it does not rain it is watered and left 

 before planting until the weeds have about all 

 come up. Then on some hot day the surface is 

 chopped up with a sharp steel rake, and once 

 more sifted with a fine hand-sieve. This takes 



out all the weeds, but lets the fine earth go 

 through. Now smooth off your bed, and put in 

 either plants or seeds, and your crop will cover 

 the ground before weeds of any account make 

 their appearance. In this way we get rid of 

 weeding almost entirely, and the surface of the 

 beds gets to be so fine it works almost like flour. 

 If there is old rotten manure enough in it to 

 put a rich dark color to it, this fine surface 

 will bring up almost any thing in an incred- 

 ibly short space of time; and if you put in 

 plants they get hold and make an astonishing 

 growth in a time that would seem almost in- 

 credible to one unacquainted with soil just 

 right in richness and tilth. The sieve we use 

 for this last sifting is a 10-cent square sieve for 

 coal ashes. You can find them at almost any 

 of the 10-cent stores. They are very light to 

 handle, and so cheap you can afford to leave 

 them out in the rain, without being much out 

 of pocket. 



A word more in regard to getting the soil into 

 such a fine state of subdivision. Within a few 

 weeks, the Country (Jentlemnn has contained 

 some excellent articles on preparation of the 

 soil; and T.B.Terry has taken it up in the 

 Practical Farmer, quoting from the C. O., and 

 adding emphasis from his experience; and I 

 will tell you what we have been doing right 

 along in this line during this dry month of May. 

 We ordinarily cover our ground with a heavy 

 coating of manure before plowing it under; but 

 for potatoes we do the manuring the year be- 

 fore; therefore there is nothing to hinder work- 

 ing the ground up fine and soft before it is 

 plowed. We do this with a two-horse culti- 

 vator having all the teeth in, and the roller. 

 In fact, we get the ground fine enough to put in 

 a crop before it is plowed at all; then when we 

 turn it over with a plow it is finely pulverized 

 soil down where thp potatoes can make their 

 growth. After it is plowed we fine it up again, 

 and use tools going down deep enough to get to 

 the fine soil turnpd under. I am getting to be 

 notional about the way my plowing is done. I 

 want the hpst plow I can get, and eithpr a new 

 point or the old one properly sharpened as soon 

 as it becomes dull. On our creek-bottom 

 ground we make the plow go down nine or ten 

 inches. If it hits a stone or hard place, and 

 then runs up. we back up the team and do it 

 ovpr again. After the plowing is done scien- 

 tifically, then with the cutaway or Acme har- 

 row, alternating with the roller, we get it just 

 right, on the same principle that we fix our 

 plant-beds, only, of course, we can not go to 

 the trouble of sifting several acres. It is not so 

 very expensive, when the ground is just right, 

 to get a mellow seed-bed nine or ten inches 

 deep. All the potatoes we raise are planted 

 by hand. The furrows are madp by Darnell's 

 furrower and marker combined. The revolving 

 disks make an additional fining-up, and the 

 potatoes are finally placed with about four 

 inches of fine mellow earth under them, and 

 four or five inches of soft mellow earth over 

 them. If you do this you will have a crop 

 without any expensive commercial fertilizer, 

 and without very much stable manure — that is, 

 where you have a soil such as we hsive here in 

 Medina. I know conditions are diffprent away 

 down in Florida, and possibly in othor places; 

 but with our clay soil this thorough fining and 

 pulverizing answers_tq a great extent in p'ace 

 of the_ manur e, rrr' \.lZt ^' S7i 



If you w'ant more on this subject, especially 

 fuller details, read Terry in the Practical 

 Farmer, along about the first of May. The ad- 

 dress of the publishers is Philadelphia. Pa. 



Since writing about fine soil well mixed by 

 sifting with good old well-rotted compost. I 

 have read what our friend T. Greiner has to 



