340 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 6. 



pure harvest, that the earth itself ought to be pu- 

 rified, and that the ground to be sown or planted, 

 should be covered with lime, or watered with a so- 

 lution of sulphate of copper, before or after tillage. 



DRILLED WHEAT — QUERIES. 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Register. 



August 7, 1835. 



I received your last Register on the 5th of this 

 month, by the way of Fredericksburg; and the 

 communication from Prince George relative to the 

 "blue stem wheat," reminded me that I had omit- 

 ted in my late letter to mention, as I intended, an 

 experiment which I also have made with the same 

 kind, as I suppose mine to be, although in Louisa 

 —whence it came, it is called "the blue straw." § 



Last fall one of my sons brought half a gallon 

 of it from Louisa, in his saddle bags. Very late 

 in October I drilled it in some land from which I 

 had taken a crop of Irish potatoes. The vines 

 had been buried nearly long enough to be partial- 

 ly decayed, between the ridges in which the pota- 

 toes had grown, and which had been manured 

 with stable manure in the trenches. New ridges 

 were thus formed between the old ones. These be- 

 ing flattened by chopping with the hand-hoe,receiv- 

 ed the wheat in trenches opened to the depth at 

 which we usually sow garden peas, and the grain 

 was covered by a garden-rake moved to and fro 

 fansversely. The drillers were directed to drop 

 the grains about two inches apart, as near as they 

 could guess; but the operation was not accurately 

 performed. The ground was hand-hoed three 

 times, and the drills hand-weeded twice; but all 

 the plants were more, or less injured by the fly, al- 

 though no wheat had ever been cultivated nearer 

 than two or three hundred yards of the spot since 

 I could remember; and a still larger portion was 

 destroyed by the frost, so destructive to wheat, iu 

 every part of Virginia. Add to these disadvan- 

 tages, there were five fruit (r^es of a medium size, 

 growing among the wheat: still the half gallon 

 produced 42 half gallons, weighing by the chon- 

 drometer 61 lbs. to the Winchester bushel, of such 

 grain as I send you to enable you to determine 

 whether it is the same that your correspondent 

 calls "blue stem." Among the grains shattered 

 out, where the sheaves lay previous to passing 

 through Douglass"' wheat machine, I found some 

 grains of smut, although in the wheat sown I had 

 not discovered any. I did not attempt 1o ascertain 

 the number of square yards occupied by the drills, 

 because they were unnecessarily as far apart 

 (say two and a half feet,) as the potato ridges 

 had been. That they might have been much 

 closer, I infer from the fact, that upon each of 

 three of the ridges I drilled three rows of wheat, 

 which were, in every respect, equal to the single 

 rows. 



The land upon which this wheat was drilled, 

 was not particularly fertile; nor do I think it would 

 have produced, in the best season, more than 

 twelve or fifteen for one, sowed broad-cast. Some 

 idea may therefore be formed of the advantage of 

 drilling, so as to cultivate wheat, over the broad- 

 cast mode of sowing. A single experiment, how- 

 ever, will not prove much; but I give it to you for 

 what it is worth. Under another cover, I send 

 you two selected heads, one six and a half inches 



long, and the other six inches; the average length 

 I should say, was about five inches; but whether 

 this was ascribable to the particular variety of 

 wheat, or to its being drilled and worked, 1 cannot 

 tell, as 1 never saw any of it before. 



Since I wrote you cm account of my skinless 

 oats, I have seen one of my brothers, who inform- 

 ed me that he made five pints from fifty-seven 

 grains planted in hie garden, twelve by six inches 

 apart, and twice worked with the hoe. From 

 these two facts, I entertain sanguine hopes that 

 Ave shall find this variety of oat far preferable to 

 any other which we have ever cultivated. 



JAMES M. GARNETT. 



P. S. I avail myself of the present occasion to 

 propound a few queries which I will be much 

 obliged, either to you, or to any of your subscri- 

 bers, or readers, to answer. 



Is there any, and if any, what, difference be- 

 tween the seed produced by the principal head of 

 the carrot, parsnip, celery, and parsley, and the 

 seed of ihe other seed-stems? 



Should any part of the tap-root of plants hav- 

 ing such roots, be taken off before transplanting 

 them? 



What garden plants, if any, will be injured if 

 hoed before the dew is oil? 



There is a very prevalent opinion, which some 

 ridicule as an idle superstition, that the seed of all 

 root, crops should be sown during the de- 

 crease of the moon, and that the seed of all other 

 crops should be sown or planted on the increase. 

 Have you, or any of your subscribers, or readers, 

 ever made any experiments to ascertain how far 

 this opinion is true or false, since, if true, it is a 

 very important fact; and if false, had better be 

 corrected by a detail of such experiments as prove 

 it to be unfounded I 



j. hi. g. 



[The queries above,'it is hoped will be attended fo 

 by some of those who are enabled to give practical in- 

 formation on any of the several points.] 



From the Genesee Farmer. 

 DISEASES AND ENEMIES OF FRUIT TREES. 



The fact that many valuable fruit trees, and 

 sometimes even whole orchards, are destroyed by 

 diseases and insects, shows the importance of at- 

 tention to the subject. A concise account there- 

 fore, of the various diseases and enemies to which 

 fruit trees are liable, and the most efficient reme- 

 dies which have yet been made known, may prove 

 acceptable to young or inexpericned cultivators of 

 fruit; especially as this information is now scatter- 

 ed through a great number of horticultural works, 

 which perhaps are accessible to a few only. We 

 therefore propose to give brief descriptions of the 

 most formidable and common of these evils, and 

 their respective remedies. 



Apple. 



The hardiness and vigor of this tree is such, 

 and its enemies comparatively so few in ihe wes- 

 tern part of New York, that little difficulty lias 

 been yet experienced in its successful cultivation. 

 It has occasionally however, its evils to contend 

 with. Among the most common are 1. Canker. 



