1893 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



357 



a quantity, in plants, as potassium; and plants 

 find, in eveiy soil, more of it than is necessary. 



I notice that Ville recommends nitrate of soda 

 together with nitrate of potash for beets, car- 

 rots, etc., while for about all the other plants 

 he prefers nitrate of potash. Besides, he ad- 

 vises farmers not to use one of the fertilizers 

 alone, unless they are satisfied that the other 

 indispensable elements exist in their land in 

 sufficient quantities. 



I will add, that Mr. Ville is not opposed to 

 barn manure. On the contrary, he advises its 

 use, together with chemical fertilizers as com- 

 plement, the one helping the other. 



As to your failure with nitrate of soda on 

 onions, perhaps it can be explained by what I 

 wrote above on this compound, or by the ab- 

 sence of other indispensable elements. I have 

 studied the matter, and found that onions, gar- 

 lic, and other plants of the same family, con- 

 tain sulphuric and phosphoric acids, and phos- 

 phate of lime. Perhaps these acids and salts 

 do not exist in sufficient quantities in your soil. 

 Please try sulphate and phosphate of lime, 

 mixed together and separately; or. if you think 

 that your soil needs nitrogen, use sulphate of 

 ammonia, instead of nitrate of sodium, and 

 give us the results. Chas. Dadant. 



Hamilton, HI. 



[Friend D., it is true I succeeded with chem- 

 ical fertilizers with rye, and, to some extent, 

 with wheat; and I generally mean to make 

 these an exception when I speak of fertilizers. 

 These experiments were also made before my 

 ground had been repeatedly enriched with 

 stable manure. The point that troubled me 

 was, that fertilizers seem to be of no use on my 

 heavily manured soils and plant-beds. Your 

 suggestion that only four elements become ex- 

 hausted is new to me; but I now remember 

 that the analysis printed on the sacks of phos- 

 phate always mention nitrogen, phosphoric 

 acid, potash, etc., but seldom any thing else. 

 Very likely your explanation is correct. I know 

 this: that guano shows a marked result on our 

 heavily manured plant-beds. The result is more 

 pronounced where it is used in connection with 

 lime. With lime alone, however, we notice but 

 little if any difference, although lime alone is 

 a preventive of the flea-beetle, and also kil s 

 the angleworms in the soil when enough of it is 

 used. I have never been able to discover that 

 it has any injurious eflPect on vegetaticm, how- 

 ever. I will try to make the experiments you 

 suggest.] 



(^ POTATO ONIONS IN SOUTHERN ILLINOIS. 



We raise but few of any kind of onions except 

 the potato onion here in Southern Illinois. 

 They should be set late in the fall, and covered 

 with manure, straw, or cornstalks, to prevent 

 from being frozen out. If planted too early, so 

 the tops start to grow in the fall, they will 

 do very little good. When planted in the 

 spring they seem to ripen prematurely, and do 

 not keep well. When planted on rich ground 

 they grow to enormous size, but they are a 

 rather coarse onion, and not very good keepers. 



De Soto, HI., March 14. Wm. E. Young. 



RAISING ONION-SETS — HOW THEY DO IT IN 

 JERSEY. 



pYou folks out in Medina are "sipw" on rais- 

 ing onion-sets. Here is the Jersey plan. In 

 the first place, you want a patch of ground that 

 is well drained; or, better, a patch where the 

 roots of trees are plentiful, such as the south 

 side of a row of apple-trees. The roots draw 

 the moisture out of the ground toward fall, at 

 about the right time foi- the sets to ripen up 

 nicely. Don't have the ground rich, or they 



will be stalky. We use, in sowing, Planet Jr. 

 seed-drill, and open No. 5 hole. This will sow 

 them quite thick at a good fair walk. 



To keep them over winter, put them on a 

 floor made of shingle laths nailed ^^ inch apart. 

 I have such a floor in my wagon-shed, which I 

 find just the thing for onions in the fall. To 

 cure them, cut some straw about an inch long, 

 and mix this with the sets, or wheat chaff will 

 do. Also, as cold weather approaches, cover 

 them with straw mats. This is the way I had 

 mine this season, and they are tine. The idea, 

 that Landreth sells onion seed for raising sets! 

 I think he is trying to impose on the public. 

 Herman Hillman. 



Dundee Lake, N. J., March 21. 



[Many thanks, friend H. Since you speak of 

 it, I do believe that you have suggested a good 

 plan for utilizing ground that is too poor for 

 any thing else on account of the roots of trees. 

 The only time we have succeeded in raising 

 many nice sets was on some very poor ground, 

 before I had manured it up to its present state. 

 Don't be too hard on the Landreths. It seems 

 to me quite likely some kinds of seeds may be 

 better adapted to ripening up early into mature 

 little bulbs than others; and you know the 

 Landreths have been for years raising onion 

 seed and sets, not only by the carload, but I am 

 told they even load a train of cars, sometimes, 

 with onion-sets and nothing else.] 



SAND AS A FERTILIZER. 



Perhaps some of the veterans may smile 

 when I talk about high-pressure gardening 

 where the soil is fertilized with sand — and sand 

 right from the shores of the lake, at that. 

 Years ago a brother of mine was living on the 

 eastern coast of Lake Michigan. It was not 

 long before he had a piece of land. The Roots 

 always must have some land sooner or later. 

 They would not be Roots if they did not love 

 ground, you know. Well, his land was all 

 sand; and in order to raise stuff, they went off 

 somewhere and got clay, and drew it in to put 

 on the garden; and they discovered that a little 

 clay would leaven quite a piece of ground. I 

 suppose all this is nothing riew to people who 

 live in sandy regions; but those of our readers 

 who have clay soil almost without exception, 

 as in this part of Ohio, will think it funny that 

 one should ever think of going after clay. 

 Well, I have for years been experimenting with 

 sand mixed with our clay soil. I do not like 

 the sand that washes up along our neighborijig 

 Rocky River, because it is full of weed seeds. 

 The "wash in the river, that changes almost 

 every season in many neglected places, grows 

 rank weeds of tremendous dimensions. If I 

 use the river sand on my plant beds, it is too 

 much like manure from livery stables. Some 

 little time ago our station agent told me there 

 was a part of a carload of sand that noljody 

 wanted, and that I might have it at almost my 

 own price. I put it on my plant-beds, with 

 marked benefit. In order to keep the surface 

 soil from baking and crusting. I used a mulch 

 of tine sand. This covered up the coarse ma- 

 nure (the surface was sifted, of course, so the 

 manure was in a moderately fine state of sub- 

 division), so as to make the surface of the bed 

 as smooth as a sawed-stone flagging, and so 

 white it made a very pretty background for the 

 plants. Well, half an inch of sand, or a little 

 less, seemed to act beneficially on almost all of 

 our plants. Little plants from seeds can get 

 up through it without hindrance. I would not 

 have more than half an inch, because it dries 

 out. This half-inch of mulching, 1 think, is 

 just as good as mulch made by raking over the 

 surface of our clay after a rain; and the sand 



