1890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



383 



THE FUN IN QL'ITTINQ TOBACCO. 



I have used tobacco 20 ytars. 1 have quit using 

 it. I have not used any for over three years. I 

 now propose to handle bees for 20 years, and see 

 which is the most profitable for me to handle— bees 

 or tobacco. If you have never used tobacco you 

 don't know the fua there is in quilting it. 



Athens, Vn. Julius White. 



SPECIAL DEPARTMENT POR A. I. ROOT, AND HIS 

 FRIENDS WHO LOVE TO- RAISE CROPS. 



That art on which a thousand millions of men are dependent 

 for their sustenance, and two hundicd millions of men expend 

 their daily toil, must be the most important of all — the parent 

 and precursor of all other arts. In t\ ,r3- country, then, and at 

 every period, the investigation of the principles on which the 

 rational practice of this art is founded ought to have command- 

 ed the principal attention of the greatest minds. 



Jambs F. W. Johnston. 



HOW TO MAKE PLANT - BEDS ON THE 

 WORST KIND OF (J ROUND. 



In our last issue I promised to tell you 

 how to make plant-beds on the worst kind 

 of ground. Keep on just as I have directed 

 before. Now, no matter how much under- 

 draining you have done, you want over- 

 drains, or surface-drains. J. M. Smith had 

 them in his beautiful sandy soil at Green 

 Bay, and I am sure we want them every- 

 where. For the plant business I would 

 have these surface-drains 3i feet apart, from 

 center to center. These surface-drains also 

 form paths to walk in as well as to carry off 

 the surplus water. We make them with 

 two horses by means of Darnell's furrower 

 and marker. Our machine leaves the 

 ground something like the diagram below. 



r^ 



r'^ 



HOW TO MAKE YOUR PLANT-BEDS. 



A A are paths, and B B the beds. The 

 machine leaves the ground as we have 

 shown it on each side of C. I) D shows the 

 fine soil scooped out of the bottom C. This 

 fine soil is leveled down and brought into 

 shape by a machine of my own inveution, 

 illustrated below. 



MACHINE FOR MAKI^G BEDS FOK VEGETABLE- 

 PLANTS, FLOWERS, ETC. 



The runners of this sled arrangement are 

 to go in the paths A, A, in the diagram 



above. The sieve or screen is just the kind 

 they use for screening sand, gravel, etc. It 

 is set at such an incline tliat, when the soil 

 of the bed is thrown on top of the screen, 

 the fine dirt and fine manure will go down 

 through, while the roueh part slides down 

 to the ground at G. Here we have small 

 stones, clumps of dirt, chunks of manure, 

 weeds, sticks, trash, etc. The meshes of 

 this screen are i inch ; that is, there is a 

 i-inch space batween the wires. The op- 

 erator scoops out the soil of the bed, and 

 throws two or three shovelfuls on the screen 

 A. Then with his foot and shovel he levels 

 off the coarse part at G, takes hold of the 

 bail C, and pulls it along, say a foot, then 

 shovels some more dirt, and pulls it along, 

 and so on. The result is, that the surface 

 of the bed is soft fine soil down several inch- 

 es, and it is finer and smoother than any 

 soil you ever got by raking. If your ground 

 IS in very good order, you may have four or 

 five inches of this beautifully fiued-up soil, 

 most thoroughly mixed and mingled with 

 all the manure that has been put into it, 

 and the big lumps and trash are all down 

 beneath. The back end-board. D, as the 

 machine is drawn along, smooths the sur- 

 face so it should be almost or quite ready 

 for the plants. Our engraver has left the 

 surface of the beds rounding, where they 

 should have been flat. The paths, or sur- 

 face-drains, are rounding, or hollow, while 

 the beds are perfectly flat, as shown in the 

 diagram. This apparatus not only does the 

 work very much faster than it can be done 

 with the garden-rake, but it leaves the soil 

 in a much better condition for the plants. 

 I have been astonished at the enormous 

 productiveness of these plant-beds when the 

 wejtther has been favorable. A man, or 

 even a boy who has had a little practice, 

 will go over the ground very rapidly. When 

 the paths get weedy, get your marker and 

 draw over it with a team, and they will be 

 scraped out most beautifully. 



For planting cabbage, celery, and every 

 thing of this description, we take a roll of 

 poultry-netting, the exact width of the top 

 of the bed. This netting is ordinarily of 

 2-inch mesh. For the celerv, we have used 

 H-inch mesh. Unroll it, and then roll it up 

 the other way, so that, when laid on the 

 ground, it will lie flat. Make it stay by 

 means of some bricks laid on it, wherever 

 it bulges up. Now give the boys an ordina- 

 ry cheap wooden sled that will just span the 

 beds. ^Vhen one of the boys is working, he 

 can sit on the sled and put the plants be- 

 tween his feet. We ordinarily, however, 

 have two boys Avork together. As the 

 plants are put in, their sled, or seat, is pvdl- 

 ed along. If the weather is hot and dry. a 

 barrel of water and watering-can should be 

 right beside them. While I write, at least 

 a dozen schoolboys are busy putting out 

 celery and cabbage (a plant in each opening), 

 for we had a nice shower last night. 



Now, before you say it is too much 

 fuss and trouble, and will not pay, just re- 

 member what I told you before ; and I feel 

 sure that it will prove true in almost any lo- 

 cality. When you get your i»iece of ground 

 up to its highest notch of fertility, the prod- 



