864 



GLEANINGS IK BEE CCLTURE. 



Dec 



for hotbeds, in place Of fermenting maniu-e. 

 Well, wiLli this arrangement, letting steam 

 into the reservoirs, we furnish bottom heat 

 for early plants very cheaply. If instead of 

 water we say hot liquid manure, we have 

 manure and bottom heat, just as they do 

 with manure from hotbeds. 



Perhaps I should add, before closing this 

 subject, that friend Cole has a patent on the 

 process : but after reading his book, I for 

 one feel quite willing to pay him for the 

 privilege of testing, say an eighth of an acre, 

 on his system. Even if W'e do not use all 

 his plans, I think we can, in this matter of 

 growing plants and vegetables, made use of 

 at least a great many of his suggestions. 

 Ilis invention seems to be providential, also, 

 in a sanitary point of view ; for these reser- 

 voirs take up and utilize all manner of filth, 

 and standing water is out of the question. 

 Only a few days before the book was receiv- 

 ed, I was feeling somewhat dissatisfied with 

 our underdrains during this wet season, be- 

 cause it took them so long a time to get rid 

 of the surface Avater. We wanted to bank 

 up our celery, fix up our cabbages and tur- 

 nips, and ridge up our ground so the frost 

 could make it fine for us ; but the ground 

 was soAvet and sticky everywhere, it seemed 

 out of the question. After we have pre- 

 pared our ground on friend Cole's plan, ' 

 however, we can dig in it all winter if we ' 

 want to. We expect to use the eighth-acre ! 

 we are going to prepare, for raising early 

 cabbage, celery, tomato-plants, etc. 



Xow, if some of you should write me and i 

 ask if I Avould recommend that you pay out 

 money to go into this neAv kind of agricul- 

 ture, I would say, unhesitatingly, no. If 

 you can dig the trenches yourself, or if your ; 

 men do it at times when they would do little 

 or nothing else, by all means do it. Most of 

 you probably have stones on your premises 

 that you would be glad to get rid of, so you 

 would certainly accomplish something in 

 this direction. It certainly can not be any 

 bad speculation to bury the stones that ' 

 cumber your ground, where they will be out 

 of sight and out of the way. For a garden- 

 patch I would get a screen, or riddle, such •• 

 as is used for screening coal, and screen or '■ 

 sift all of the ground in the garden, to a | 

 depth of 18 inches, or fix a small bed thus 

 screened and pulverized, until you see how 

 you like it. In working among plants, hav- 

 ing the ground in beautiful order enables 

 one to do more than double the amount of j 

 work ; and all successful gardeners now ad- j 

 vise manure without stint. I 



If we will only call to mind incidents fa- 

 miliar to most of us in regard to this matter, 

 we shall see that it is not at all unreasona- 

 ble. As an illustration, when we Avere 

 planting our basswood orchard one end of 

 the lot Avas disfigured by a cellar Avhere a 

 house had formerly stood. To fill the cellar 

 up, Ave picked all the stones off the field and 

 thrcAV them in. big and little. Then we 

 threw in all sorts of rubbish over the whole, 

 ploAA'ing and scraping the dirt around the 

 sides of the cellar until the ground was leA'^- 

 el. To get the ground in order, Ave planted 

 corn. While planting the corn, I made the 

 remark that it would " probably be of little 

 use to plant any over that old cellar, for 

 there is nothing but lumps of hard clay— not 

 a bit of fine dirt.'' But just for the fun of it 

 I let some corn rattle doAvn through the 

 hard yellow lumps. I didn't eA^en stop to 

 bring some mellow soil to put over the ker- 

 nels. They just rattled doAvn into the creA^- 

 ices between the clay, out of sight. The 

 corn came up, and for a Avhile looked yellow 

 and spindling ; but l)y and by the color be- 

 gan to change, and pretty soon it toAvered 

 aAvay above the rest of the field. The old 

 cellar held water, and the corn-roots got 

 doAvn into the stone-pile and into the Avater; 

 and even though the ground they stood in 

 seemed to be the poorest kind of hard clay, 

 the corn on that spot Avhere the cellar Avas, 

 Avas the finest corn I ever saw. The stalks 

 Avere like trees, and every one contained two 

 or more mammoth ears. 



On our premises we have not the stone 

 needed, Avithout draAving them quite a dis- 

 tance, AA'hich, at this season of the year, 

 Avould be more expensive than to purchase 

 fragments of stone at the stone-quarry. We 

 have just been offered such fragments for 

 $2.00 a carload ; that is, a carload of 20 tons, 

 the quarrymen offering them at this low 

 figure in order to get them out of the Avay. 

 They also offer a thin kind of slaty stone 

 for covering that may be easily split to any 

 thickness desired, for S6.00. We shall use 

 this material for fixing our eighth-acre, and 

 the result of this experiment Avill be reported 

 during the coming season, before this book 

 of mine is complete. 



With a suitable one-horse plow, and scrap- 

 er to match, the excavating may be done al- 

 most entirely by horse power, or horse and 

 man poAver combined. Tlie nature of the 

 soil has something to do in the matter. If 

 the scraper is not at hand, or there is not 

 much to do, loosen the dirt Avith a ploAV and 

 throw it out Avith shovels by hand. 



