160 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



should bii cautious and clrcum- 



mentfs iunovaticn, 

 spoctj' 



Tlrre aie some matters of agricultural produc- 

 tion tnd theory which have been brouijht to the 

 publjc view witliin the last three or lour years, en 

 wliidli I will not hesitate to give my cpinion. First 

 as td improved grains and vegetables: 



Black Sea Wheat. 



The Black sea wheat — the kind now extensively 



to five thousand dollars fortlie annual product of a 

 single acre of ground. If you have mulberry trees 

 to sell, dispose of them and raise more— sell them 

 to such of our scuthern brethren as have full con- 

 fidence in tlie success of the silk business : I will 

 warrant that plants here raised will flourish better 

 at the South than southern plants will flourish in 

 the Nortli. Sell them, my friends, if your gains 

 shall not be half as much to the acre as our North- 

 ampton silk srowers' present prices. Atsuchpri- . ,- i>,t 

 ces I would always recommend you to sell rather cultivated m several towns of the coun.y ol Mei- 

 than to buy. If you pui-chase at all, buy the trees 

 and cuttings raised at the North — buy not tlie an- 

 nual but the perennial plants, and thus assure your- 

 selves that your tree will withstand the severity of 

 the climate. | 

 Sagnr Beet, j 

 Sugar beet cultivation: the fever on this sub- 

 ject lias not been equal to that upon the Multicau- 

 iis. There is however danger tliat too much maj' 

 be attempted on this head. In France the exten- 

 sive manufacture of beautiful sugar from beets has 

 been successful far beyond my expectations. The 

 same reason against the silk business will apply to 

 the sugar beet. Labor is cheaper in France than 

 it is here ; and if in the higher regions of New Eng- 

 land where the beautiful rock maple abounds, our 

 fanners cannot be induced to avail themselves of 

 the most leisure season of the year and t!;e facili- 

 ties offe»ed in the production of sugar, surely we 

 cannot expect them to undertake the more severe 

 and uncertain process of producing sugar from tlie 

 beet. I am an.xions that the experiment of making 

 the beet sugar shall be thoroughly tried in this 

 country. It will be time enough for New Eng- 

 land to commence the business in earnest after she 

 shall see the experiment succeed beyond a doubt 

 iu Pennsylvania or in other parts of tlie country 

 corresponding in climate v.-itli France. We may 

 raise tlie sugar beet, and find it perhaps not less 

 useful for cattle feeding than the ruta baga, the 

 mangel wurtzel or the carrot ; but, at present for 

 the sugar and molasses which we cannot obtain in 

 exchange for our products in the West Indies and 

 in Louisiana and Florida, we may tlirow ourselves 

 upon the beautiful sugar tree wiiich is indigenous 

 to our soil, orchards of which in the most favora- 

 ble positions may be planted and raised in less than 

 the time attained by man at middle age. 



Chinese Tree Corn. 



A gross imposition has been passed upon the 

 agricultural community within the last year in tlie 

 wonders that were published by a Mr. Thorburn of 

 the State of New York, relative to a kind of maize 

 called the Chinese tree corn. Mr. Thorburn had 

 reputation as a horticulturist and vender of seeds : 

 and the abuse of the confidence reposed in him 

 cannot iind an apology even in the ill-gotten gains 

 he has derived iVo:ii llie speculation. The stor;,-, as 

 it was first told, was too extravagant for my belief. 

 I pu.cliascd and planted lu.t an car of this Chinese 

 tree corn. Some of my neiglibors have done it : 

 one of tiscm who purchased when the advertise- 

 ment first appeared has a highly manured, plat of 

 ground covered with magnificent corn ten and 

 twelve feet high, and four and five ears sometimes 

 to tlie stalk; and if v.-e could have tv/o months more 

 of sivimer would obtain probably a greater quan- 

 tity of grain, certainly much more weight of stalk 

 and husk, than is cnmmonly produced in our corn- 

 fields. There are others who purchased the seed af- 

 terwards and find it to grovr into giant stalks even 

 taller than the first, w-;th the ears scarcely set at 

 the usual time of frost. This corn is precisely 

 such as the many thousand bushels brou.ght from 

 the Chesapeake bay and the region further south : 

 excellent to feed horses and fatten hogs, but not as 

 good for bread as our own more diminutive corn, 

 and not at all adapted to our climate. The kind of 

 corn first received by Mr. Thorburn was possibly 

 an improved kind, similar to the Baden corn which 

 is adapted to .a southern climate, and i.nigiit have 

 been an improvement in Kentucky or Illinois; but 

 it was not at all calculated for New England. The 

 wonderful story about it at o:ice so mucli attracted 

 the public attention that tlie genuine corn was soon 

 exhausted by the demand ; and the great profit re- 

 alized at once induced the venders to substitute a 

 kind of corn absolutely worthless. .The public indig- 

 nation would be best expressed by withdrawing all 

 patronage from persons knov/ing it to be what it 

 has turned out to be, who vended tha Chinese tree 



In most improvements requiring radical changes 

 in culti-vation there is more danger from prouia 

 ture action than from delay. This country erabr.ac 

 es all the varieties of soil and climate; and com- 

 mon sense should teach us tliat what may succeed 

 well at one point may entirely fail at another. Our 

 steps in the inarch of improvement, where improve- 



rimack— I believe to be the surest for this climate 

 that can be adopted. This wheat is of less bulk in 

 straw tlian t::e improved Tea wheat, the Siberian 

 bald wheat, or the cemnion old fashioned bearded 

 wheit. It requires not so long a season to grow 

 and ripen — it better stands the blight, which is the 

 great danger of all wlieat sown so. late in the year 

 as to avoid the grain worm or the weavil — it pro- 

 duces in the absence both of the blight and the 

 worm quite as large a crop as any other kind of 

 spring wheat. Of this wheat the present year Mr. 

 James Critchett of Epsom, N. H. raised Ibrty-two' 

 and a half bushels of winnovi/ed grain from five 

 pecks of sowing and little more than one acre of 

 land. The land was alluvion near the bank of Sun- 

 cook river, a branch of the Merrimack. 



The value of slaked lime upon cultivated land 

 is shown in Mr. Critchett's crop of wheat: during 

 tlie summer this was spread in small quantities 

 broadcast upon the wheat ground at two different 

 times. I hope to be able hereafter to state in the 

 Farmer's Monthly Visitor the precise measure of 

 the land on which ]\Ir. Critchett's wheat was rais- 

 ed — the qualitv and mode of preparation of tlie soil 

 — the time the seed was put into the ground, and 

 other interesting particulars. 



The Brown Corn, 



The Brown corn from the Winnipisseogee lake. 

 From a crop of corn which received a secnnri pre- 

 mium of the Strafford Agricultural Society one 

 year ago, having yielded one hundred and seven 

 bushels to the acre, I procured ten bushels of seed 

 corn last winter, which was distributed in various 

 places. Some of this corn sufi'ered from damp- 

 ness and cxpo.sure on its way after it left Concord; 

 in other cases it was soaked either before or after 

 t was put in the ground and did not spring to veg- 

 etation. 1 planted myself on about three acres one 

 bushel of the seed, generally at three kernels in 

 the bill ; and there was scarcely a fiiilure. The 

 excellence of tliis ecrn consists in its large kernel 

 and full QXT, filling after it is shelled nearly an 

 equal space with the corn and cob — its great quan 

 tity of o:irs in proportion to the bulk of stnlk, and 

 its early maturity. A portion of my field was in 

 the sand of the river bank where about twenty 

 loads of coarse winter manure to the acre only 

 were spread befcre planting: hero the ecru came 

 to maturity earlier, and the crop is less. But on 

 that part cf the field manured two seasons in suc- 

 cession, wbc-ie there was less sand and mere 

 strength, the crop of corn is as heavy as it may 

 well he : it ripendcd so as to be out of danger from 

 frost on the first of September, and is nearest to 

 early ripening of any kind of corn within my 

 knowledge to the diminutive Canada corn, which 

 produces loss than half in quantity upon the same 

 ground, and which requires so great a stock of pa- 

 tience to gather and husk in quantities. This 

 Brown corn carried South will be quite as sure of 

 an ample space of time to grow in a short season 

 perhaps as any other. "We had better pa}* a four- 

 i'old price for seed corn raised and tirought to us 

 from the distance cf one hundred miles nnrtli than 

 to have the gift of the same kind ef corn brought 

 to us from a climate which either by elevation or 

 distance en the map measures the climate of two 

 degrees south. 



The Kohau Potatoes. 



The Rojian potatoes: I think I do not mistake 

 when I recouimoiid them for trial. I have not yet 

 tried them for the t.-.ble ; but I will suppose them 

 to be inferior to the best kind in that re.^pect. Used 

 exclusively for the feeding of brute animals, even 

 though they shall r.nt contain tlie same quantity of 

 nutriment in proporticn to the weight, I believe 

 they will prove to be a most valuable article of the 

 potatoe kind for general cultivation. A gentleman 

 this year presented me with several Rohan pota- 

 toes, all of which weighed eight pounds ten oun- 

 ces, and a friend ip Boston sent me asingle Rohan 

 having eighteen eyelets. The first I planted 

 on a plat of ground well manured about the mid- 

 dle of May in three hundred and sixty parts, hav- 

 ing one eye to each part. Only about twenty eye- 

 lets failed to spring imt of the ground. At first 

 there v/as in each case a feeble locking single stem: 

 in some instances the sprout appeared in a fort- 



night after planting — tn other cases it did not come 

 for a month. The single potatoe which came from 

 Boston was lornarded with w'crd that it came di- 

 rectly from Prince Rohan's farm in France, which 

 might or might not be true : it was shrivelled and 

 looked as if it might have passed perils by sea as 

 well as perils by land; hut every sprout of the 

 eighteen sprung up and has become a fruitful vine. 

 It was satisfactory to receive this inasmuch as its 

 appearance proved that the first eight pounds plant- 

 ing was of the genuine kind, or else there were 

 two impositions : the Ij.-st was planted about the 

 first of June. Until about the twentieth of 3a- 

 ly the stalk springing in many instances of a sin- 

 gle eye not larger than the thumb nail was so di- 

 minutive, that I was induced to set out cabbages in 

 the spaces between the rowa of potatoes, expecting 

 from the state of the ground a fine crop. The eight 



pounds of seed covered a space of ground measur- 

 ing fifty-five by thirty-five feet. By the first of 

 August the vines so spread as to cover the wholo 

 ground, cabbages and all. Wliile the blight has 

 long since killed almost every kind of potatoe 

 growing which was planted as early as these Ro- 

 haas, they have continued to flourish and grow up 

 to tlie present time : on the Sflth September the 

 vines were .as green as they were on the 20th July. 

 I know not wh^t will be the crop of potatoes.be- 

 low the vines, for thej' have not yet been dug ; but 

 it is my belief that 1 shall have an hundred pounds 

 of potatoes for every pound planted. If no acci- 

 dent befal, I will have this crop accurately meas- 

 ured and will present ihe result in the 

 Monthly Visitor. I tliink tlie culture of the R-o- 

 han potatoe will disappoint none but the most ex- 

 travagant expectations. 



Benefits of Root taltivation. 



The culture of rootcrops for the rearing of swine 

 and for winter feedifig of cattle I believe to be a 

 great object to most farmers. The mangel wurt- 

 zel, the su^ar beet, the common beet, the carrot 

 and perhaps the parsnip may be raised on ground 

 that will produce a good crop cf corn : the ruta ba- 

 ga may be raised on a lighter soil and with less ma- 

 nure than the other crops. In prcpovtion to the 

 quantity produced with the same labor, 1 am in- 

 clined to give the preference to the ruta baga. 

 That CTop'may be raised willi about as little labor 

 as a crop of potatoes upon the same ground. If 

 the season be fortunate, six and eight hundred and 

 BSnietimes a thou.'and bushels to the acre are pro- 

 duced: a thousand bushels weighing twenty-five 

 tons, dealt out to a stock of cattle, will be equal in 

 value to at least ten tons of the best hay. It is a 

 mistake to suppose that the ruta baga spoils either 

 the meat or the milk of the creature fed upon it. 

 This mistake originated in the fact familiar to ma- 

 ny praellcal farmers that the turning of fat cattle 

 and cows into fresh feed where turnips, cabbages, 

 and onions have been raised and cleared out, leav- 

 ing tops and leaves, will make them liable when 

 sl.-iughtcrtd or milked to leave the meat or the milk 

 tainted witii the taste and flavor of the articles up- 

 on which they have fed. Milch cows fed daily 

 on ruta baga once a day will communicate no 

 taste to the milk ; and if there be any doubt about 

 fat cattle, the leaving off the ruta baga one week 

 and substituting corn or other feed, will leave their 

 meat in as good flavor and i.uality as if they had 

 fed exclusively on corn. I prefer late sowing of 

 ruta baga, say" as late as the Ulth of June, to an 

 earlier day : this root grows best in cool weather, 

 and by late sowing it much better escapes the tur- 

 nip fly and destroying grubs, and has the advan- 

 tage of a vigorous giov\-th late in the fall until se- 

 vere frosts shall render it a matter of prudence to 

 gather them. Beets of the various kinds and oar- 

 rots, to such as do not admire ruta baga, may b-o 

 made well to supply their place. Fed with either, 

 winter milked cows may be made to give douiilp 

 the quantity of that most necessary and most grate- 

 ful article in the consumption of every family that 

 they will give when fed simply on the best Eng- 

 lish hay. "With the general cui'ti-vation of roots my 

 present conviction is""that the quantity of beef and 

 pork and butter and cheese produced in New Eng- 

 land may be increased one half, and might be very 

 easily doubled. 



I will notice in a concise manner a few of the 

 important principles which, in the nature of things, 

 will result in rescuing the agriculture of the coun- 

 try from a retrogadc 'course — which will so accu- 

 mulate the means and the wealtli of the country as 

 to enable us to support four times its present pop- 

 ulation in ificrea^fed comfort and ease. 



A rule worthy of the fiirmer's attention. 



A most important axiom to be kept in mind by 

 everv farmer is, to brcali up and cultivate no ara- 



