THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. 



Growing Blackberries. The essentials of suc- 

 cessful blackberry culture are high fertilization, 

 thorough tillage, judicious pruning and heavy mulch- 

 ing, says a writer in the Industrial American. The 

 blackberry in its native hedge row is annually 

 mulched heavily by decaying vegetation. The soil 

 about the roots is always loose and open, and the 

 finest berries are on canes that grow in some spring 

 run where one needs rubber boots to get them. Na- 

 tive varieties bear berries one-fourth to one and one- 

 half inches in length, on canes six to eight feet high. 

 Transplanted to the garden they fail to grow and 

 change their character entirely. I believe their ram- 

 pant growth to be due to a soil exceedingly rich in 

 vegetable mold, and to the unfailing supply of fresh 

 clean water that spring runs furnish. It is not stag- 

 nant water that sours the soil, but a constantly chang- 

 ing supply of sweet spring water that seems to be the 

 blackberry's special delight. 



Give the plants high cultivation early in the season 

 and a heavy mulch as soon as hot, dry weather comes 

 on. Use bone and potash in some convenient form 

 pretty liberally at the start, and the heavy mulch 

 supplied annually will supply the rest as soon as it 

 decays. Pinch out the tips of the young canes when 

 from three to four feet high, thus forcing them to 

 branch and incidentally to more thoroughly ripen 

 their wood. If the plants have many side branches 

 it may be well enough to thin them a little, or possibly 

 it may do to cut back the ends of a few buds, but I 

 had rather take my chances for a crop from an un- 

 pruned plantation than from one cut back by one 

 who was not an expert. 



Sorghum Syrup bylrrigation.The eighty and 

 ninety gallon crops of syrup realized by Minnesota and 

 Mississippi valley sorghum growers is laughed at by 

 the Central Washington farmers who have been 

 engaged in the attractive industry but a year or two. 

 One Yakima valley farmer who last fall had a nice 

 field of the sweet stuff reports a yield of 200 gallons 

 per acre, which sold readily in the local market at 

 60 to 80 cents per gallon. Another grower made 

 300 gallons on two acres, which he says is much more 

 than he produced on his former farm in Iowa. It 

 sold at 70 cents in the home market. 



Eggs in Winter. With the high winter prices 

 for eggs in all the arid region, and often a scarcity so 

 great that eastern eggs are shipped out to the coast 

 by carloads, the increase in the poultry industry on 

 the irrigated small farms is a natural and healthy 

 development. E. H. Davis, in Poultry Monthly, tells 

 how he solves the problem of winter eggs, as follows: 



Years ago the poultry business was not as lucrative 

 as now. During winter, although our poultry was 

 well sheltered and fed and great care used to keep 

 the buildings clean, giving plenty of fresh water, air, 

 etc., we found in spring that cost of grain, scraps, 

 potatoes, etc., far exceeded the income from eggs, 

 with labor thrown away. 



Now feed cut green bones in fair quantity every 

 other day, and some of the time every day. They 

 are inexpensive, and with a good bone cutter they 

 make, when cut fresh every day, so nice a food that 

 we can only liken it to a nice rare steak to a hungry 

 man. The fowls thrive and the chickens grow 

 rapidly. The mineral part of this food gives chick- 

 ens material for their growing bones and for the 

 laying hens the shells, while the meat, gristle and 



juices in these green bones gives material for flesh 

 to the growing chickens and for the interior of the 

 egg. 



So now our fowls, instead of being over-fat in 

 winter, are giving ut> eggs. Instead of being a sorry 

 looking, dejected, unprofitable lot during the molting 

 period, they are wide awake and strong, and many of 

 them go so far as to give us eggs regularly at 

 this time. The gram bill being largely reduced, 

 the egg yield being increased, with no loss from 

 sickness, all aid in making our winter and 

 spring record very encouraging, and no one could 

 induce us to neglect the feeding of green bones 

 freshly cut at all seasons of the year. 



The Winter Apple. The record of the fruits of 

 the irrigated orchards of the far West in eastern mar- 

 kets during the past few years, especially of the ap- 

 ple, together with the falling off in the eastern crop, 

 are proof enough of the assuree future of arid land 

 fruits. For some years to come the palm must be 

 yielded to California for system and business-like 

 methods from seed to table, and to her likewise for 

 adaptability for many of the more tender species 

 which, however, she may in time have to share with 

 Arizona and New Mexico. But the standard fruits, such 

 as the late peach, late pears and winter apples, may 

 be grown of much higher quality in any of the colder 

 valleys of the interior, because high quality in tree 

 fruits is only obtainable in localities where the win- 

 ters are cold enough to harden and thoroughly mature 

 the wood. Therefore the winter apples of eastern 

 Washington, eastern Oregon, Idaho and Montana, 

 though small in total amount as yet, have already ac- 

 quired a reputation of the highest. We believe that 

 in the winter apple, for many years to come, lies the 

 proper cash crop of the properly diversified farm ot 

 all the northwestern irrigated valleys. So enthusi- 

 astic are some of the papers of that region over the 

 prospect that they are apt to overdo the matter, but 

 it does no harm to quote one of them: "The fruit of 

 Hood river, the one that is to make her famous as 

 well as prosperous, is the winter apple. That can be 

 kept. It can be gathered leisurely, once in bearing, 

 bring better and steadier returns and at the very 

 least outlay. John Sweeny's orchard last year, its 

 first year of bearing, produced more net money than 

 would or could have been derived from the same area 

 of land sown to wheat in thirty-six years. This year 

 it should yield fifty times as much, next year seventy 

 times as much, and then for twenty years 100 times 

 as much. In other words, one acre of winter apples 

 is worth more, year in and year out, than a hundred 

 acres of wheat. Six acres of good orchard will yield 

 a Inrger net yield than a section of wheat land. Mul- 

 tiply the acres in Hood river valley by 100 and some 

 idea of the wealth that it will eventually produce may 

 be gained. In other words, every section in fruit will 

 produce a cash value equal to three townships of 

 wheat. The winter apple is going to accomplish this 

 result. And the next few years, as the young orch- 

 ards come into bearing, will prove the truth of this 

 assertion, though it now seems a wild one. We can 

 but reiterate our former words: 'Plant apple trees; 

 twenty acres if you can, one tree if that is your limit, 

 but plant at every opportunity.' When this valley is 

 an orchard, from the mills to the summit east of us 

 and from the river back for twenty miles, then only 

 will it have attained its full development." 



