1896 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



543 



as you know, were planted whole, the sprouts 

 being carefully preserved and utilized. 



Lack of space compels me to describe my trip 

 to the Storrs & Harrison establishment In our 

 next issue. 



It is now July 7. During the past month I 

 have gone over quite a large part of the north- 

 ern and middle portion of the State of Ohio, on 

 my wheel and on the cars. Now, I do not want 

 to boast; but permit me to say there are no po- 

 tatoes anywhere that begin to compare with 

 our own five or ten acres. There are potatoes 

 that are looking very well in many places, and 

 in some of the gardens there are some that look 

 a good deal like our own ; but nowhere have I 

 seen any thing to compare with ours in the way 

 of potatoes by the acre. We have several acres 

 now of early planting, where the vines cover 

 the ground so completely that it would be im- 

 possible to think of cultivating. In fact, such 

 has been the case with most of them for two 

 weeks past. If you lift up the vines you will 

 see the earth broken and heaved up; and if you 

 put down your finger you will find great smooth 

 clean potatoes everywhere. The yield is cer- 

 tainly going to be something enormous ; and I 

 might think it was something in the variety 

 were it not that all good varieties are yielding a 

 good deal alike. A friend suggested the other 

 day that I must have some photographs, for it 

 was too good a sight to be lost. Now, It would 

 not take any very great stretch of the imagina- 

 tion, or conscience either, to get a nice photo, 

 and say right under it that it was the result of 

 using a certain brand of potato fertilizer. We 

 did put on Mapes' potato manure at the rate of 

 about 400 lbs. per acre; and the temptation is 

 very strong to say that this fertilizer, at least, 

 had something to do with it. But when you 

 come to look at the " nothing" strip, so far as 

 the eye can determine there is no difference 

 whatever. In fact, at one point the " nothing " 

 looks about the finest of any part of our ground. 

 When I say " nothing " it must be remembered, 

 however, this means there was no chemical fer- 

 tilizer applied. The ground was all heavily 

 manured with old well-rotted compost unless it 

 was where we turned under rye and crimson 

 clover. 



We have formerly been troubled very much 

 with scab, especially where potatoes followed 

 potatoes; but this season we purchased a bar- 

 rel of sulphur, which was drilled in with the 

 phosphate. Where this sulphur was applied, so 

 far as we have dug the potatoes they are won- 

 derfully clean and nice. But we can not very 

 well teil until digging-time just how much bet- 

 ter the sulphured plots are than the other. 



But I want to talk a little more in regard to 

 farming in Northern Ohio. Why, it would al- 

 most make a good farmer weep to look over the 

 potato-patches in a great part of our State I 

 was going to say it \sjust as much work to take 

 care of a poor crop as it is to take care of a good 

 one. Why, my friend, it is a good deal more 

 work to grow a poor crop. Some of our pota- 

 toes covered the ground so quickly that we 

 hardly had a chance to put the cultivator in 

 them at all. The Breed weoder did almost the 

 whole of it; and I begin to think now that per- 

 haps tho cheapest wav in the world to raise a 

 erop of potatoes would be to keep the Breed 

 weeder running over them from the day they 



are planted until the vines cover the ground. 

 Go through them, say every third day. You 

 may be inclined to say at first that this would 

 be a good deal of work; but just contrast it 

 with waiting till the weeds are half an inch high, 

 and then cultivating them with an old-fashion- 

 ed cultivator, and going at it with a hoe, and 

 hoeing out the weeds that the cultivator misses. 

 Why, it is just awful. My impression is that, 

 when you let the weeds get half an inch high, 

 your potatoes have sustained an injury that 

 they will never get over. Another thing, keep- 

 ing the ground constantly stirred, making it a 

 little finer every time you go over it, and, in 

 fact, stirring it every day when it rains a little, 

 seems to have a wonderful effect in making 

 things grow. Somebody said recently, that 

 growing crops need air as much as they do 

 rain ; and just as soon as we have a shower 

 that is heavy enough to make a little crust on 

 most soils it cuts off the air. In fact, the wet 

 surface cuts off the air to some extent. Now, 

 just as soon as it will do, stir up this wet or 

 damp surface; break the crust, pulverize the 

 lumps, and, if the shower is a light one, stir the 

 wetness down into the ground before it evapo- 

 rates. No wonder farming doesn't pay. I know 

 prices are low; but it does not help matters for 

 the farmer to become discouraged, and sit down 

 and let the weeds grow. His expenses are just 

 the same when he is idle and when his horses 

 are idle as when he is at work. If prices are 

 low, then cut down expenses. Stop buying ex- 

 pensive fertilizers that must be paid for in cash. 

 Save the stable manure by the most approved 

 methods; and what you lack in manure, make 

 up by stirring the soil with the Breed weeder or 

 some equivalent tool. 



Yesterday I visited a branch of the experi- 

 ment station, at Strongsville, O. It is in charge 

 of Mr. E fward Mohn. This place was selected 

 by Prof. Thorn because it seemed to be about 

 the most unpromising piece of clay soil he could 

 find in the State. When I inquired the way to 

 the experiment farm at the store, the store- 

 keeper said if young Mohn could succeed in 

 raising good crops there he could grow them 

 anywhere on the face of the earth. Well, the 

 soil is poor — that is, the average farmer would 

 call it poor; but Prof. Thorn, when he selected 

 poor clay soil, selected a bright young farmer to 

 manage it; and young Mohn has some very 

 nice looking crops of almost all kinds. How 

 did he manage? Why, he underdrained the 

 land, and then used stable manure. The sta- 

 ble manured plots were away ahead (almost 

 every time) of those where heavy applications 

 of commercial fertilizers were used. The latter 

 show results, it is true ; and with heavy appli- 

 cations the results are very satisfactory, but 

 not equal to stable manure, and the expense is 

 ever so much more. I aski^d friend Mohn if 

 farmers around there availed themselves of the 

 very valuable object lessons that were to be 

 found all over the hundred acres. He said that, 

 while the larger part of them invested every 

 year in fertilizers, scarcely one of them would 

 take the trouble to look over the farm and see 

 \\ hat the State is doi ng for their benefit. Some 

 insist that it is cheaper to buy the fertilizer in 

 bags than to haul out and spread their own 

 barnyard manure. A great many find fault 

 with the farm because he does not manage to 

 raise bigger crops — as if the State hired him for 

 no other purpose than to get large crops! A 

 great many of his plots do not contain enough 

 to pay for harvesting ; but these very plots 

 teach us the most valuable lessons. In one 

 place they have a nice stand of soja beans. The 

 direction was to drill th^m in as you do grain. 

 Half of the plot is almost smothered with wr-eds, 

 while the other half is almost perfectly clean, 



