22 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



"Have you ever sown the seed broadcast?" 



"Yes, with fair results; but drilling is preferable, as 

 it gives a good chance to get rid of weeds." 



"Are weeds very troublesome? " 



"O, no; the pig weed and the 'horse' thistle are 

 about the worst we have to contend with, and they 

 are not bad.'' 



"When do you cultivate the first time? '' 



"As soon as the weeds appear and I can follow the 

 rows. I use a cultivator attachment to my seed 

 drill." 



"How many times do you cultivate?' 1 



"I have found it necessary to cultivate but twice; 

 but if some of the weeds escape the cultivator I go 

 over the ground late in the season and pull them out 

 by hand. ' 



"About the thinning how is that done ? " 



"So far I have waited until the young onions are 

 big enough to sell in Yakima, then pull, tie in 

 bundles and take them to market. In this way I get 

 a neat little income for the work of thinning, and 

 leave the rest to grow for fall use." 



"How far apart do you want the plants to stand? " 



"Wethersfield about three inches. Yellow Dan- 

 vers two to two and one-half inches; larger varieties 

 four inches or more." 



"What is your method of harvesting?" 



"When the onions are ripe, pull by hand, throwing 

 the onions of six rows together in a sort of windrow; 

 let them lie there in the sun for about two weeks, then 

 top and sack if to be sold at once. If to be kept, 

 make a crib like an old fashioned corn crib, elevated 

 a little from the ground, narrow and not too high, say 

 three feet wide and six or seven feet high. It must 

 be well ventilated. If not sold before winter, bank up 

 with hay all around and over the top. If very severe 

 weather is probable, increase the thickness of the 

 hay. In this way the onions will come out all right in 

 the spring. Some of my neighbors have just opened 

 their cribs and find their onions perfect." 



"What do you consider a fair yield?" 



"As a general thing, 350 to 400 bushels per acre, or 

 say eight to ten tons, as they sell by the ton in this 

 country." 



"What is a good paying price?*' 



" Well, it costs about $25 per acre to grow the crop. 

 At $20 a ton the crop is not a bad one. Just now the 

 price is $60 a ton, which, you see, brings a pretty 

 good net return." * 



last winter, has yielded returns many times 

 greater than the outlays. Every farmer who has a 

 few fruit trees, as all farmers should have, and 

 every one who devotes himself exclusively to fruit 

 growing, should get and carefully preserve THE 

 IRRIGATION AGE for that month of the present year. 

 It contains matter of great value. 



Spray and Insure Your Crop. Unusual drop- 

 ping of apples continued late the past season. Valu- 

 able testimony in favor of spraying apple trees has 

 developed during 1894. Many advanced orch'ardists 

 have made note of the effects of timely and proper 

 spraying of orchards, and the results have been 

 remarkable. It has been found that orchards sprayed 

 in the spring and early summer have made a much 

 oetter growth and have held their fruit much better 

 than those not treated. Winter spraying for the bark 

 scales and some other insects is the better plan. In 

 some sections it is believed that spraying, at a cost of 

 say $3 per acre, has saved fruit worth at least $50. 

 These calculations have been made by a comparison 

 of adjacent orchards, some of which were sprayed and 

 others not. In fact, it is almost the universal testi- 

 mony of those who have fully tested the matter, or 

 have given it close observation, that a judicious use 

 of the best approved sprays, according to the formu- 

 lae and directions printed in THE IRRIGATION AGE 



Manufacture the Products at Home. A good 

 motto for farmers, especially in districts remote from 

 the great markets of the country, is: Raise cattle, 

 swine, horses, mules, sheep and poultry enough to 

 consume all grain and forage produced on the farm. 

 In other words, let the products of the farm be manu- 

 factured on the farm, and then let the manufactured 

 product walk to market. It should be remembered 

 that with every bushel of grain, or every ton of hay 

 sent away from the farm in its raw state, an appreci- 

 able amount of nitrogen, potash, phosphoric acid and 

 other valuable ingredients is permanently removed 

 from the soil, and must be replaced or the soil will 

 soon cease to yield returns adequate to the labor ex- 

 pended upon it. By returning a large percentage of 

 the manurial elements to the soil in feeding stock 

 upon the farm, the fertility of the land may be indefi- 

 nitely prolonged, and the farmer realize the results 

 of being at once a producer of raw material and a 

 manufacturer of it. To illustrate the converse of 

 this proposition, take the case of the cotton planter in 

 the southern States. Every year the land under cot- 

 ton is being deprived of its fertile elements which are 

 sent across the sea in the form of raw cotton fiber. 

 The producer is compelled to replace this loss by ex- 

 pensive commercial manures and as a result becomes 

 poorer each year in the direct ratio of his acreage in 

 cotton and the size of his guano bill. To put the whole 

 truth in a word, a one-crop farmer is almost always 

 a poor man, and a one crop country a poor country. 

 Diversity of crops and the manufacture of raw ma- 

 terial on the farm through feeding stock is the best 

 farm policy. 



"Lightning has Struck the Horse" is per- 

 haps a short way to a long story. Electrical power 

 has been so largely utilized in hauling street cars and 

 performing other tasks formerly performed by horses 

 that a rapid decline in the value of horse flesh has 

 been already noted, and will doubtless continue. 

 The time is very fast approaching if it is not already 

 here when the ordinary all-round cheap "plug'' horse 

 will become extinct. Such stock will soon cease to 

 pay its way, and must retire to the pleo factory, the 

 canning establishment or the fertilizer factory. It 

 therefore behooves farmers everywhere to be alert, 

 and adjust themselves to the new conditions which 

 are everywhere taking place, due to the advent of 

 electricity among the cheap, practical and permanent 

 forces which move our civilization to higher planes 

 with each recurring decade. Horse breeders should 

 take due note, too, of the inroads which the bicycle is 

 making upon their business. So popular has become 

 the light, rapid, safe and non-consuming wheel, that 

 the saddle and buggy horse is rapidly losing his job 

 in many places. 



Still we must continue to need good draft animals 

 for the plow on the farm and the truck in the city. 

 The family cariiage may sometimes be propelled by 

 power drawn from the clouds, but the city street and 

 the country road must undergo great changes before 

 such means of transit shall have become common. In 



